Today is where your book begins

Am not looking foreward to today. But my way of dealing with it is just to go to work and get though it hour by hour.

It's a no school day, and we have five 1/2 staff members out. Four are on their way to Portland for a conference, one is in the hospital, and the 1/2 is leaving for Portland in the afternoon.

Yesterday, fully staffed, we had 30 kids in my building alone. We can only have 39 and we know there was more than 9 babies. However there shouldn't be as many school aged kids. Chaundi told most of the parents that we would be understaffed and would not have room for them. I suspect we will still have a few though.

Nikki, Jeanna and Danielle are all like "Bring movies!" So I raided Diane's movies last night after I got my nails done. (Which, my finger tips still hurt.) I have 13 or something like that. But not all are for the kids. I did grab a few just for Ed and I to watch. And I don't expect them to watch them all today... I grabbed a few for lessons in the future.

I have something growing on my eyelid, lower lid. I can see it. :x I'm very unhappy about that. If it gets much bigger I'm going to the free clinic to have it looked at. It looks like a little pile of eye slime stuff... but it won't move. I'll have to stop messing with my eyes (I've been rubbing them a lot lately) and make sure my hands are super clean when I put my contacts in. *pout*

And something else... what was it...? Stella's fat. But that's not it. Oh yes, my 15 hours of required trainning I am supposed to get a year. I was only going to have 13 and a few weeks ago I asked if I had to have all 15 even though I am in to the business late in the year. She said no. But I will have all 15. I have my 5 hour First Aid and CPR class (which was rather fun actually.. small group, very easy, no test!) next weeked I have my 8 hour conference on After School Programs, and then Chaundi said she found a Child Abuse and Negelect class I need to take next month which is 2 hours. Go me for getting 15 hours of trainning in 2 months.
Also I need to try and get my food handlers card, tonight actually.

Am going back to Dad's house to finish nails (we did the french manicure thing last night, we are decorating today.) So before or after that I'll run upstairs and take the test. So I can use his credit card to pay for the card.

Oh yes, he wouldn't take the $88 I owe him for insurance last night, he paid for my car insurance in full for 6 months and said he's rather see me get in a new place than pay him back. I told him we'd check the place out, but we really don't want to move again. We just got unpacked and settled and while he found us a better place for $20 more... we LIKE this place, and we didn't have to pay a pet deposit and we have a washer and dryer and don't have to maintain the yard (which we do at the place Dad found).

Anyway... I gotta go get ready for work now. Joy. 8 hours alone with Anita. *shudder*

x. Chalka to the vet (need to double check time...)
x. Pick up comforter/sleeping bags on the way home.

x. hope my new checks arrive because we're hella short on money after rent. We get paid they day after rent is due, so if I write a check it gives me a day or two to get my check deposited. *crosses fingers* I wonder if there is a number I can call to check my order status. I don't think I've been billed for them yet. Lets go check the bank shall we?


Oh.

That's not good.

Here's hoping I get my checks before the 5th.

The following is a very strong and moving letter written by the mother of a gay boy in Vermont...
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"Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities
that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

Stolen from rivensoul

10 reasons why gay marriage is wrong

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were
allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I
wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn?t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

repost this if you belive homophobia is wrong

Get Educated and Support Humanity.
December 1, 2004

THE ULTIMATE SILENCE
October 12, 1998



Six years ago today, Matthew Shepard was murdered for being homosexual.

What will you do to end the silence?

thank you stupefy_icons for the banner.