How accepting are you

How accepting are you all to gay men and women? Transgender people? I ask because I been struggling with my Sunday's at church. I am a paid employee at a church. It's been a couple years at least. It's sort of like being self employed. I been allowed to bring my son with me.. I have been allowed to bring my grandchild with me.. My pets.. just kidding.

This church is very accepting and loving of the people I mentioned above. In general I don't have issues with gay people or transgender. I can be friendly.

A while back, a couple months ago, this man, who I didn't judge cause he was gay started be friendly with my son who was almost 14. He asked if my son could go to a Ice Hockey game with him and a couple other people. I agreed and my son spent the afternoon and evening with them.

My son had a great time. This man expressed interest in my son coming over to watch movies cause said my son asked him to take him to a movie. I agreed but then got to thinking how fishy that sounds.. this isn't a young guy wanting to be buddy buddy with an almost adult. This is someone about 40 years of age but really doesn't look it..

Well, anyways, I told my husband how I was concerned and he looked him up. He is a sex offender.. Strike one for the church. They knew nothing of this.. They have delt with it. He still goes to the church and has pretty much stopped talking to me for the most part.

Strike two.. is this big man that has finally decided to offically dress 100% as a woman. This is a person who has been rude to me when I was doing fundraising for my son. Recently, on the church facebook page.. i responded to a question of is because I don't want to hold a grudge over him being grouchy. So he has taken to speaking to be politly now that I have been friendly.. but not a lot and I am okay with it.

Two weeks ago, I went to the bathroom and he is in there going to the bathroom. I find that weird..I have changed bathrooms and go to the one that is meant for handicapped and it's only one stall and it locks.

Today, I didn't have any children and I stiked a conversation with a man after he asked me a question about having change for a 20. I said are you new to this church? He went on to have a long conversation about being a gay man and knowing some of the gay members.. he spoke about being bipolar and even multiple personatlies coming out. He spoke about some other weird stuff.. said how he doesn't consider himself religious but needs a place to socialize... to belong. He got disturbed by something that was preached about and it was pretty twisted.

I been going thru some pretty tough times.

My dog was attacked by a pit bull a month ago. He just got his stitches out on Friday and is doing well. I been parinoid to walk my dogs and even walking alone scares me. I been feeling overwhelmed on Sunday which is one of my days off. I work Saturday 3 to 10pm. I have to get my husband at 11 pm. We are not home until 11:30 pm.. probably sleeping by 12:30 am. I have to be up at 7:00 am to drive my husband.. I get home about 8:15 am.. I need to leave about 9:30 am to get to church by 10:00 am. I get annoyed on the Sundays I don't have any children come in. This happens quite often but not as much as it used to. I usually leave the church by noon and a lot of times I need to run errands to get groceries, soda and pet supplies. I know some of it I bring on myself.. like the pet stuff. I have to get my husband at 3pm and we come home and then he takes the car to work. I usually have to catch up on dishes and quite often pet stuff.

My husband says quit the church job. I am debating it. I enjoy it. But the other kind of day I would have if I quit was I would be home all day cause then my husband would probably drive himself.

I don't know if my frustation is coming more so from the kind of people the church attracts or that I am just getting tired. Last summer when my husband got the job.. I would drive him to work at 8 am, then run on the bike path, shower, stop at the gas station and munch on cereal while I waited for kids if any to come in.. Then I would drop paperwork off. I don't recall any major errands ect.. I believe I just came homw and was home for the day.. but I had the car so if I needed something I could go. My husband would take his bike and ride home at night.. now he has two jobs cause change of owners changed somethings up.. so just writing this reminds me that it's not really the same situation anymore.. once it gets warmer.. he will go back to riding his bike and that will free up picking him up at 3pm unless bad weather.

I enjoy watching the children when I do have them. One family just had a baby almost a year ago and another Mom is due this summer.. so finally I have babies to play with. for a while I didn't have any children. I get frustrated with how much effort I go thru to get there and then no kids.

For the record. I am not a member of the church. They do treat me well. I do join in with coffee hour once in a great while or if they have a special. It all depends more on if I have my son or not. Every since the situation with the man being a sex offender I have pulled away more and socialied there less. The moey isn't that big of a deal but it helps. sorry for the ranting.. would you leave this job considering the people it's attracting? For the record. I don't have a problem with gay people. There are others that I am aware of that haven't done anything to cause alarm. Today's guy didnt do anything but he did seem disturbed/.

7 day step challenged ended

Izzy beat me!! It was a close race! Very close. It was pretty fun thing to do. It helped motivate me and I think her too. I am sending her a gift card of her choice tomorrow.

I challened Izzy and my sister to a 7 day step challenge.. the one with the least amount of steps sends the other one a 10.00 gift card. First, I had also asked my sister but she can't join in the fun due to school. However, another fitbit friend wanted to join but it's a little different for her.
She gets quite a few more steps in than us due to having an active job. So she challenged us to come within 35k of her total or we set our facebook profiles to a a flamingo. If we come in with less than 35k she sends us a ten dollar gift card.

We just started today so hopefully this will be a fun challenge to motivate all three of us. I need something to keep me moving.

Tomorrow, my dog, Charlie, is having surgery due to his dog attack. The skin has died so that has to be delt with.

I heard from Alex today. He said he wanted to talk and to call when I could talk.

He wanted to tell me that he was promoted to an manager at the McDonald's he works for!!! So he will be training soon. Isn't that exciting!!

Bad news of the day is that I walked my dogs shortly before work and a pit bull make it's way under the fence and attacked my smallest dog. He managed to get the dog away from me and some neighbors helped separate them so my dog survived the attack but need emergency care to be fixed up.

Alex spent a couple days with us for his brother's birthday! He has come home for a few days a few times since he moved out. I enjoy the short visits and it's always nice to see him. However, a couple things do bother me a bit.

I almost always have to get him and pick him up and eat the cost of the gas.. the getting loss factor is / was more of an issue of the money but also sometimes a time thing. I bought myself a gps because I don't want a fear factor of getting lost keeping me from seeing Alex when he is less than an hour away.

The other issue is that Alex never comes with any money to spend. It kind of limits us to what we can or can't do if he can't pay his own way to say the movies or out to dinner. I am talking so broke he doesn't have money for a soda. We really don't buy Stephen soda so buying Alex soda for our house could cause some trouble.

I did ask him the day I was getting him to bring a few bucks to chip in for dinner cause we were going out. He said he would try but mentioned he had been broke. He brought ten bucks and I felt bad and gave him half of it back and later on left him a few bucks so in reality I didn't keep any of his money.

This is an issue we don't know how to handle. Do we say when you come make sure you bring some cash ect? I told my husband I thought of telling Alex that he my husband said that Alex just might not have any spare cash really to bring.. he pays rent where he stays. I would never want my son to think he can't visit based on the inabilty to have a few bucks in his pocket. But depending on what I might or might not want to suggest it could cause a damper on paying for him.

In most cases, if I have it to spare I would pay anyways.. It's how my Mother treats me to dinner ect and even paid for me when we were on vacation together but the difference was I did offer and oould pay for myself.

This situation has really got me thinking about how I should proceed with gift giving ect.. so many times my heart tells me to send Izzy's Mom flowers for Mother's day or send Izzy a little something just for the hell of it. For the record, I haven't actually sent Izzy's Mom flowers and only once sent Izzy a gift other than Christmas and her birthday. But that fact that I am considering sending to them makes me really have to do some serious thinking.

If I have spare money I should be considering the needs of my sons! I hope that doesn't sound bad but I should look deeply and see if there is anything my kids need and go from there. I been throwing around of the idea of just out of the blue sending Alex a few bucks.

It's not that I don't want to give Izzy a little extra gift once in a great while or even reach out to her Mom but I do think maybe I should at times help Alex out.

I just don't know if that would insult Alex to suddenly get a surprise with money or keep him poor because I am filling a need he isn't. But then again... i don't see myself sending a lot of money or all that often.

Secret Daughter.. a must read

The book that caught my attention is called Secret daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

It's an adoption book which is typical of quite a few books that I seek out to read but I didn't seek this out. I just found it at church on the book exchange table.

What is ironic about this book and it's something that you don't see often is that it's showing life after adoption from three different angles.

The birthparents.. mostly the birthmother who lives in India.

The adoptee who was born in India but left at an orphange by her birthparent. This move literly saved her life. There is no if ands or butts. This child would have died..

The adoptive parents.. the father happened to be born in India and came to America to go to school and fell in love with an American girl and they decided to live their life in the States.

I won't give anymore details of this book so if anyone should want to read it the story isn't ruined.

It is a fiction story but it was an awesome book.

Great book

I came across an adoption related book without looking for it. Truth is that I haven't searched out a lot of adoption related topics lately. I am not sure if that's cause I am working hard at fitness and recently got a pet aquatic turtle and been loving it.

I will try to blog about the book tomorrow. Finally I have an topic to go on. So we shall see if I can get my thoughts down and give the book justice it's due.