HERE’S THE POST:

“1. Being gay is not natural. Real people 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. 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.

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 Brittany 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 the world.

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. 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.“

Thoughts???

♥ Brooke

Money, for me, is a strange subject. My family has always been solidly middle-class. I think we have always probably lived a little above our actual means (just like the rest of middle America) using credit and black magic to get mostly everything we wanted and felt we needed.

I am done with the cycle of credit though. I’ve always hated credit… I watched as it almost sucked my family under, and then watched them painstakingly crawl back out of the credit-hole. So, at the age of 23, after growing up swearing to never use credit, I find myself in debt to the credit companies just like the rest of America. I started out using it “only when necessary,” and “only when I could pay it back right away.” Somehow over the years though, the word necessary seemed to change and morph in my mind and the lines blurred. I began using credit to pay for things that were “necessary” in the immediate… only they we’re necessities at all. So much for my game plan of using little of no credit.

The Bad News
I owe about $10,000 in credit debt. What the hell? I don’t even know where all this debt came from. What did I buy? I really couldn’t tell you… I know part of it was used when I was between jobs… paying for everything form groceries to hair-cuts to things I really didn’t need at all but seemed vital at the time. I know that some of the money paid for renovating the basement apartment I was living in at my parent’s house. I bought new flooring and painted everything… it was good. The problem? Thanks to credit cards, I’m still paying for renovations in an apartment I no longer live in. The rest of the money, I guess, will have to be contributed to dinners and drinks out with friends and probably a little shopping too.

The Good News
I am paying them off, and no longer using credit at all. I just got like $2,600 back in federal taxes, and I’m putting it all towards paying off my highest interest rate card. If I keep it up, and be diligent in paying over the minimum each month, I think I can make it out of this hole I dug myself into. No extra money, but at least I’ll be debt free soon. (I say soon in completely relative terms, mind you. )

♥ ,
Brooke

I get all of that.

I’m missing the point though of why people who get married and have babies together, then go out and have affairs with other people. What the hell? How can they be so selfish? If you stopped loving the person you are married to, or suddenly realize you made a huge mistake ever having married them in the first place, get a divorce. BEFORE you cheat.

Even if you can be reconciled with the idea of cheating on your spouse, how can you condone the idea of cheating on your innocent children? Cheating on your family? If you are married with kids and you cheat, you are just as bad a child abuser. You are abusing the relationships of your family. When the shit hits the fan with you spouse, who is going to suffer? The innocent little kids you so blissfully brought into the world, long before you ever realized you hated who you were married too. Not fair. Not even right.

Disgusting.

I was thinking about this whole issue… about cheating when you have kids. I was talking with a friend about this when our discussion suddenly took a new turn. This new turn was most intriguing, and in turn more enraging, than the previous issue at hand.

I found myself wondering why anyone can get married and have kids if you are straight. If you’re gay and in a committed relationship, you’re just out of luck. No marriage for you (unless of course you drive across country, but then the license is not even valid anywhere else). No gay marriage, but all the “regular” marriages that are falling apart at the seams, oh, yeah, they’re just peachy.

And kids… if you’re in a straight relationship, go right ahead, have as many as you want even if you can’t take care of them, or decide you don’t want them anymore later and walk out… sure, why not! But gay people having children? Why, that’s an abomination, of course! You can’t have happy gay people walking around with babies! They would probably infect them with they’re gayness.

Who. Are. We. Kidding. America.

When will we learn that homosexuality is just a slight difference from heterosexuality. It’s all the same, with only a few variances. None of those variances affect the way we feel about partners or children. None of those difference add up to anything more significant that they type of person you are attracted to.

As a straight female, I can no more “infect” my opposite-sex tendencies into a child than a gay person could make a child homosexual. It doesn’t work that way! Difference is a GOOD thing. It’s what keeps like interesting. It’s what makes life worth living.

When will we learn that discrimination is never acceptable? It wasn’t ok when we did it to women. It wasn’t ok when we did it to African Americans. It wasn’t ok when we did it to the Native Americans. It wasn’t ok when we did it to the minorities. It’s not ok now! How many times must we learn this lesson and make the same mistakes? How many groups of people whose collective psyches we have damaged with discrimination, must we make amends to? When do we learn that this hideous pattern should not keep being repeated over and over again with new subjects of our ridicule?

Comments?

Brooke

I really need to finish like 7 assignments for my e-portfolio for Notre Dame… which, btw, is pointless considering no potential employers will ever see my e-portfolio. It’s online… and no one at a job interview is going to want to pull up a website.. they want paper copies in front of them to touch and feel and flip through. Ugh.

I should also do my Oceanography test… its due Sunday and my brother is coming in town tomorrow for the weekend.. so I probably won’t have any other time. Boo!

The final and lovely option: cutting the freaking grass. Ugh. At least I won’t have to be writing papers? Yeah, that makes it better… haha.

So, what to do? e-portfolio is due May 1, but I am always super busy so I should do it now. Oceanography test is due Sunday and I definitely won’t have another time… though I could maybe put it off until tomorrow morning… which would mean I definitely need to cut the grass today. I guess the grass is an ok option, considering it IS really sunny outside. It’s the first nice day in a while, so at least that doesn’t add to the suck-factor.

The verdict: skip the e-portfolio and keep on procrastinating on that one. I have time, and I’ll make it work later, like always. Start and possibly finish the Oceanography assignment. Once I get through with that, I’ll mow the grass.

I see no point in putting off the shit-tastic Oceanography test…it’s not going to get any better… and I’ll do that, then be so sick of sitting inside glued to a computer that mowing the grass for an hour will be a welcome escape.

Now to make myself actually follow through will this brilliant plan…

Probably procrastinating,
Brooke

Breast cancer will not win.

I’ll keep you all posted… my Mom had a meeting with the surgery team today at the Breast Center at AAMC, and they scheduled surgery for April 30. They’re doing a lumpectomy and then once she’s healed they’ll do preventative chemo and radiation.

You stand no chance of winning, Cancer. Why don’t you just give up now???

Fiercely fighting,
Brooke

OMG, it would be fantastic. She probably wouldn’t like me very much though because I would bug the crap out of her on a regular basis. I would be calling everyday asking her to tell me a story. Lol. Or maybe just to tell me what happens after Breaking Dawn? Like what happened with Jacob and Renesmee?

This is a picture of Stephenie waiting for me to come over. She looks like she just can’t wait any longer…

But maybe she would like me… I could give her good ideas… I could help her out. Lol. Yeah. Right. Like she needs my help, right?

Anyway, this whole post is really just a plea for any who stumble across it to read the Twilight Saga… it’s so excellent. Seriously. Even if you hate sci-fi (’cause I do) and even if you HATE vampire stories and think they’re always stupid (’cause I do)…. you should read them anyway.

They aren’t the normal sci-fi or vampire books. If you like a good story with love, action, heartbreak and snarky conversations, you need to read these books.

(“Take a look, it’s in a book – Reading Rainbow.” Can you hear the music too?)

let me hear ya!

♥ ,
Brooke

Got some things straightened out in my head, and am feeling more optimistic about things now. All I need now is to put things in motion. I am good with a plan…

More info coming soon… just wanted to give everyone a small update in case you were curious where I was after that last post… lol. Sorry about that (but hey, I asked for advice, where was the love???)

~B

I am in a shit-tastic mood today. Grrr. I’m just so confused with everything right now and I don’t do well unless I have a plan and goals. Right now my goals are this: make goals, stop hating life. Lol.

I have to go to my stupid freaking math class tonight… “the nature of mathematics,” is quite possibly the most stupid class ever. Can’t I EVER take anything that doesn’t blow? The only classes I ever liked were my journalism classes… maybe that should tell me something.

Blah, blah, blah. Anyone have anything insightful or hilarious to say to snap me out of this glum?

Please?

~B

PS: Before I can go to class, I get to be stuck in traffic while driving back to WORK because I forgot my purse. The only thing that could make this more awesome is if someone happened to steal my purse from my classroom before I got back to work to get it. Yes. That will probably happen…

I’ve wanted to be a journalist for a teen magazine since I was in 6th grade. I pursued that path full-speed ahead until I graduated college with a degree in journalism in three years, working as an intern who was promoted to an editorial assistant at Girls’ Life along the way. After I graduated I swiftly got a job at a teen magazine right outside of NYC. I HATED it. I love writing and helping teens find their way through the tumultuous hormone-driven world of middle school…. but the magazine I worked at near NYC was a celebrity teen mag… and it was terrible. They were cut-throat and super-sleazy. They lied about contests and it was just not at all where I wanted to me. I was looking for a new job when I was told that I was no longer employed there because I didn’t have enough contacts in the NYC area. Super.

So, while looking for a new journalism job, I moved home (back to MD) and was paying the bills substitute teaching while doing interviews. I was asked to long-term sub in a kindergarten classroom about a month after I started subbing, and said yes. It was paying the bills and I was loving helping the kids. From there, I just fell in love with teaching and decided to get my teaching certificate… I had the perfect plan: teaching pre-K or kindergarten and doing freelance writing on the side: the best of both worlds. I’d have summer’s off to write as much as I want to and could be getting a steady income all while having the direct connection with kids I loved.

The plan hasn’t been working out nearly as well as I thought.

My life is crazy! I’m at work all day losing my mind (working at a new school which I don’t really like AND teaching 2nd graders who I am relatively certain are the spawn of Satan…) and then I am in classes all night working on my degree. Last semester I was driving 55 minutes each way to my college classes, and this semester I am taking online classes with like 15 papers due by May AND hacking my way through a math class and a science class because my undergraduate degree in journalism didn’t have enough math and science credits for a teaching certificate.

Taking that into consideration, I am almost done with my certification. I have this semester, then I need to take 2 more math classes and a science class with a lab this summer. Translation: I won’t have a summer off to write like I thought. Grrr.

Also, while I’ll be done with my certification in August and could get a job at public school (the teacher goal)…. the public school system has a hiring freeze due to money problems, and won’t be creating any new positions or hiring any new teachers until all the positions are offered to currently employed teachers. No! No! NO!

So, now what? I’m not really even sure I actually want to be a teacher. I think the common thread between wanting to be a teen mag journalist and being a teacher is helping kid navigate through the world and become better people. So what does that mean? What do I do? Where do I go from here?

Look for a new job? Where? In what profession? I have no idea.

Help. Thoughts. Please. Begging.

~B

On the upside I weighed in at weight watchers this morning and despite going out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night, I lost 2.8 pounds this week. Sweet. I made smart food choices at the restaurants that I could enjoy enough to feel food about it and got to still with my plan. Hell yes. Hopefully I can keep up this momentum.

~B