As it Currently Sits...

There are some moments that I look at how I am behaving, or how I am feeling and I think to myself- “This isn't normal,” or “I am so messed up that I can never become well again…” These of course are completely irrational thoughts and I am totally aware of the fact. I am even working on a behavioral/cognitive plan to address my depression. This plan seems to be working really well, however these irrational thoughts can still intrude and become stagnant in my mind. Lets just examine the facts…

School is going amazingly for me. I feel as though my hard work is beginning to pay off and that things are actually going to come together. I am telling myself that this is a feeling that I should savor and hang on to for dear life simply because I believe that a more grounding sense of reality will eventually surface. However, I am finding it very useful to look back at where I have come from, what I have been through that the scars that have been made and take some pride in where things are going as of now.

We escaped Colville. That alone was a feat worth the feeling of great accomplishment. I worked very hard in order to move away and continue my higher education.

Thomas. Found love in Colville and maintained this amazing relationship through some extremely difficult times and situations. The community was against us. However we were able to make a few really good friends that were amazingly supportive. Our families also came around as well and have since been an immensely appreciated support system. Our relationship is a continually growing process that is something I could never live without. He is my life and I love him with all my heart.

School. As it is sitting right now; I am getting 4.0s in all three of my classes and my intelligence is being recognized by several of my professors.I am participating in three different research labs and its looking as though my name will appear on two different research projects being presented in Cancun for the Western Psychological Association. I am also strongly considering going to Cancun to help with the presentations. Money is an issue however.

After rampaging through an entire season of “Law & Order SVU,” I seemed to realize that I am actually doing really well. So many of the characters in this show are living under extremely harsh, inner-city conditions as many people in real-life are actually living. So many people in this world deal with drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual assault and domestic violence on a daily basis so who am I to think that I am not a good person or that I am not normal?

I know that it was a very strangle place to gain some perspective, but it seems to be something that happens to me rather often. I am very happy and life is amazing! I feel as though I am a very lucky person and I am extremely grateful for all of my amazing friends.

Thanks!

When You Least Expect It....

TODAY has been a good day. I woke up slightly before my alarm went off and I did not get angry. This is actually a major accomplishment for me because normally that situation makes me feel short-changed or ripped off. I feel that if I wake up two minutes before my alarm goes off, that I have lost those two, precious minutes of sleep and can never get them back. It’s infuriating. But, I got up, got dressed and went to class without coffee. Another accomplishment!

After French, I walked over to the library like I normally do to either study, or goof off on my computer for an hour before my next class starts. Today I actually read some of my required textbook reading. Go me!

Then, after the last class of the day, I came home to make a quick lunch. I decided to throw together a quick taco salad. Making this meal always reminds me of a strange time in my childhood when I first had what were called “Haystacks.” I honestly do not know if anyone out there knows what Haystacks are, but I would appreciate some feedback if you are familiar with the term as well.

I was further reminded of my first experience with Haystacks as I ate my meal. Its another amazing signifier of the power of taste and smell in association with memory recollection. Oh the human brain!

Many years ago, my family was associated with a congregation that met at a building called “The Ark.” If you have read previous blogs here, then you know of the congregation that was called “The Meeting House.” These two groups were very closely intermingled and in some ways competed for its participants. The Meeting House was a lot closer to most people, however The Ark was a much bigger and nicer building that had a more traditional pastor situation instead of whomever wants to speak can speak that was The Meeting House’s motif.

I can barely remember this day; I must have been about nine years old when I first had this meal. I remember it being surprised that my mom or dad didn’t know what Haystacks were since they were supposed to know everything. But that day, my entire family learned to begin with the hamburger, add the hot chili, then the cheese, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes and other veggies and corn chips with perhaps a touch of Ranch dressing or Thousand Island on the top. By the time this stack was completed, it was generally pretty large and took up most of the plate.

I cannot remember how much I had eaten that day. But I remember eating way too much. I also remember a guy named Robert that was also there that I found to be incredibly attractive. I don’t know what there was about him, or that day… but I was trying to observe as much of this man as I could. I remember being drawn to his charisma and the way he was talking to the single girls that were his age and to his handsome face.

Its strange how these memories are connected and how they can rush back just from a simple lunch. Tomorrow, I will wake up again and do the same thing! Perhaps I will play with some of the other things in my refrigerator to see what can be conjured up for lunch!

Movie Night

It was a rather basic plot that was repeated many times over in the imaginations of a handful of my young friends. It all started out with a single mother that represented the epitome of motherhood that was faced with the trials of raising an unruly sixteen-year-old daughter. The daughter was spirited, adventurous and wanted more for her life that her mother had. The secret underlying plot, was that the mother also wanted a different life, but had taken the high road after marrying her high school sweetheart, and then becoming an expectant mother. This mother’s ambitions became even more oppressed after the death of her husband and the complexity of raising a ten-year-old girl completely on her own. We will call this young daughter Mary.

The next branch of this movie plot involved an ironic polar opposite of the first branch, with a lot of it being the exact same. This was the single father whose loving wife had died, leaving him to raise a young son (whom we shall call Tim) completely on his own as well. This son would also be sixteen years old at the present time of the story. The son was a good son for the most part. He had been taught to drive and to shave by his father, but was in a big hurry to be an adult. His world would be turned up side down after meeting the heroine of the story.

That’s right, you guessed it: Mary.

Upon these two young people’s meeting, it was love at first sight. Mary, being the independent and somewhat obstinate young woman that she was, would pretend not to care about Tim, or even noticed that he existed. However, young Tim had been captivated by her intense spirit and had become instantly smitten. From that moment on, he would have to match her adventurousness and work to make her see that the two of them were destined to be together forever.

This new side to Tim results in his father’s increased concern for his son. It was not normal for Tim to not be interested in the weekly football game on TV. It was not like Tim to be secretive, reclusive and to be so incredibly preoccupied in his own thoughts. Was it drugs? What could explain this behavior?

Through a few clique scenes of extreme male strutting and a couple comical scenes of Tim making a complete fool out of himself, Mary realizes that she can no longer hold her feelings for the charming young man inside anymore. She takes a leap… and goes with her heart.

The romance is kept secret from the naturally concerned parents. But all is revealed in a climactic dramatization of feelings and tears that involves teenagers slamming the door and running out into the rain while weeping. Their parents called after them, but with no avail.

The crying teens find each other in the pouring rainstorm and pledge their love for each other promising that it will last forever! Then, in slow motion, they have their first kiss under the moonlight, and the pouring rainstorm that drenches them both. The parents of the young ones had chased after them, and met for the first time as they both, simultaneously learned that their children really did, truly love one another. Then, just before the credits began to roll, a spark seems to ignite between the single father, and the single mother as the dad says:

“Well, I think that we had better get used to the idea that our children are growing up. Would you like to get coffee with me at some point?”

The End

The viewers totally know where that’s going to go!

When I was eleven years old, the age of sixteen seemed to be so magical. It was the age I was so excited to become. I would be able to drive and would be able to be cool. I was so excited about this, even though it seemed to be so far off into the distant future, that I was able to make my friends just as excited about it too.

I played the part of Tim in this story, and my friend Joey, who was a year older than I, played the part of Tim’s father. My Sister Kelly, was the single mother and played the part amazingly. She was usually more excited about playing house that anything else at the time anyway. Katie was the heroine in the film and played the part of Mary to a tee. She was also a very spirited young girl that loved to ride her horses and make the boys blush.

The infamous scene in the rain actually took place under a sprinkler in Joey and Katie’s back yard. There was no moonlight. And, instead of a kiss, it was a series of almost kisses… no contact of the lips was ever made, except perhaps, purely by accident. We knew that we would get into trouble had there been an actual kiss, so we decided to get technical just in case of a parental inquiry. Our technicalities rarely worked.

It’s funny for me to think about Katie now. As children, we had decided that we would get married when we grew up. However, our families parted ways about the time that her parents got a divorce. A couple years ago I ran into her at the local Wal-Mart where I was greatly taken aback. The memories, the feelings, then… the embarrassment that she was probably remembering the same things. I don’t know if it was just my imagination, but after the initial “Hey!” I think that we both turned bright red.

She's a Man Eater

The tone of this blog has sort of missed the mark that I was originally shooting for. The idea that I had upon creating this blog was to recount a lot of my memories in a fun and humorous manor. Instead, I seem to have come across a little too depressing. A friend of mine told me the other day that my last entry almost made him cry.

Oops!

A different approach:

Many years ago, my parents had made the decision to home school my siblings and I. Soon after, it was decided to sign us up for some children’s Bible studies. It was really an excellent idea considering that we had no other real access to families that had made similar choices. As you are most likely aware, we were very close to our immediate family and spent a lot of time growing up and playing with our cousins, but they were not the best of influences considering their exposure to public education. Evolution was evil and my science textbook referenced Noah’s Flood while explaining the rain cycle. Public education was not good and we needed some more like-minded peers.

I will never forget the first day of Bible lessons. My mom drove us there in our Ford minivan and parked on a hill that I felt would eventually make the van roll onto its side. But it didn’t. I do not know where my mom met Anita (a very loud and large woman with the biggest heart and a most robust laugh that infected everyone around with smiles), but I know that she was the person that suggested this particular Bible study place. It was someone’s house in the middle of what seemed like a giant field of dead grass that all sloped toward a ravine. The lessons were taught by a really nice, but very old man, who I assumed lived in the house. Please keep in mind that I was nine years old and this man was probably only forty. But he seemed really old to me.

The old man had these amazing tokens that were awarded to the children that were the quietest and the most polite during Bible story time. I, however, was not able to earn one of these totally cool and shiny coin-like tokens because of a girl named Laci. She was a beautiful blonde that was a year older than I. It was the way I liked it back then. And, She really liked me too! She was constantly trying to get my attention while we were learning about Joseph’s coat of many colors, by poking me, ticking me, or making funny faces at me. Now, before you start thinking that this is really cute, let me tell you a little more about Laci.

Even though my judgment was slightly skewed at the time, I knew that Laci was bad news. She was pretty and knew that she could get away with just about anything. She had spirit too! And, she seemed to get some thrill out of making guys look like fools.

She intimidated me.

Laci was one of those girls that enjoyed leading a guy on just enough to get him to do or say something goofy simply to end up laughing at him. Of course this meant that she liked him, but it was a good way to establish who was in charge. She was what I now call a manipulative bitch. This brings me back to the part where she tormented me (in a very good way of course) during our Bible lessons. It made me fidget and giggle. It made the old man scold me. It made Laci laugh. I was her bitch and she liked it. This is all fairly complicated for a bunch of nine and ten year olds, but one hundred percent true. I must admit that I was totally in love with the attention!

The next week was our second Bible lesson at the strange house in the grassy field. I was so completely determined to earn a “good boy” token that I did the unthinkable. I completely ignored Laci. I didn’t move. I hardly breathed. It took every single part of my conscious effort to remain as still, and as quiet, as a young boy possibly could. I was so incredibly intent on getting a token that I do not even remember what we were taught that day, but I remember as clear as can be, the amount of mental concentration that I had invested. Time passed about as slowly as an evening spent watching “The Lonesome Dove” with people that you can’t stand.

It completely paid off and I was awarded a token at the end of the day. I half expected a little extra from the old man in recognition of the substantial level of stillness that I brought to the lesson, but instead, I was handed the token just as casually as the other kids that sat only almost as still as I did. But, I did not care. I had my treasure and would in fact treasure it for many weeks. It was stowed along with my other little and shiny treasures.

Laci still loved to torment me, and I didn’t mind as much after I won my token. I had gotten what I wanted, and decided that it was too much work to earn another. I would continue to chase after her and she would start this little game of “Hard to Get.” By the time that I was twelve, I had given up on the cute and bouncy blonde and had become much more interested in a tough, tomboy brunette. By this time, Laci’s younger and more awkward sister, Sara, had fallen in love with me. She was a very sweet and funny girl (I think that her humor developed because she lived in her older sister’s shadow), but I was not available.

I had my heart set on Katie the tomboy. She became the love of my childhood life and will be the center of some really fun stories to come!

Lucky Number 13

When I was young, I felt that turning thirteen was a pretty big deal. For some reason I thought that it was a major stepping-stone into the beginnings of adulthood and forever leaving my childhood behind. I remember being so amazed that I would, in fact be, a teenager on my thirteenth birthday. I remember thinking also, that people should be making a bigger deal out of it as well.

Where was my spotlight?

I am going to implore that you, the reader, reach back into the depths of your own childhood memories when it comes to birthdays in order to visualize the pain of this story. Birthdays were a big deal weren’t they? Don’t you remember having a massive cake coated in sugar, fire and wax? Remember the friends and the family surrounding you (and only you) as you tried your best to blow every last candle out with one breath? I should confess that I have never blown all of the candles out in one breath. Never.

It was a couple years before my thirteenth birthday that I had started to go to work with my dad. It started out innocently enough. One day a week I would get up early like he did, dress up in something warm, like he did, ride all the way out to the job site like he did, just to play with the left-over blocks of wood, like he did not. This was something I could handle and in a lot of ways, it was something I enjoyed.

Then one day, things started to change.

I was building some cool “houses” out of the leftover blocks of wood when dad told me to pick up the broom and sweep up some of the sawdust on the newly constructed floor.

It was a minor inconvenience, but it was something that I could do. I was not naïve enough to believe that I was “one of the guys” in doing this. I knew that if I weren’t careful, I would be in the way. I did, however, enjoy a lot of the jokes that the guys made and would subsequently relate them back to my mother. Most of the time you had to have been there to get them.

After sweeping a big pile of sawdust into the middle of the floor, I returned to building my super cool houses. I had been looking at them as I was sweeping, cascading into the bank, and decided that I should turn them into a village.

Next up: a grocery store!

“Trevor, take that shovel and scoop up that pile into this bucket.”

Fuck.

Ok, that wasn’t too bad. Perhaps I could also make little roads to connect the houses in my village. That would be really cool!

“Trevor, what are you doing? I asked you to sweep up all the sawdust!”

Honestly taken back, I responded:

“I did, I even scooped it up into that bucket.”

Then, in his incredibly belittling tone, my dad explained (as if I should have already known):

“There are all these other rooms to be swept Trevor.”

Fuck! When would I get the roads built? I would need to hurry on this whole sweeping business. But, as it turns out, there was not enough time to get back to my little village. There would never be enough time from that day on.

Ready or not, I would have to grow up.

Looking back on that whole situation, it makes a little more sense. I blame a lot of this on Jacob. He was my dad’s, boss’s son. Its ok, take your time to read that again because it is a little confusing in print. I blame Jacob because he was not only the boss’s son, but he was a good kid. Always eager to help was he. He is a couple years younger than I, but seemed to love being on the job and helping his dad out as much as he could.

Apparently he was very naïve.

My dad would observe this little guy’s behavior on the job and then expected me to act the same. He also wanted an eager helper on the job that he could be proud of. I would have rather played in the dirt.

This became the start of my going to work with dad… to actually work, every Friday.

This wasn’t too bad at first and I really enjoyed it! I would go the same time that Jacob did and we would have a lot of fun playing/sweeping. We got a lot done together, but most likely did not get all that much done. This is when it was decided (most likely by my dad) that I should come on Wednesdays to clean up, and then Jacob should still come on Fridays. This would sort of spread out the cleaning of the job and would create a happier atmosphere all around.

This was not cool to me.

I was then expected to clean even more! All by myself as well. I am not sure when this happened, but I was no longer able to use the excuse that there were power cords on the floor. I had to find a way to suspend them from the floor in order to sweep… under them. It was very complicated. I think it was the boss; his name was Kelly, who walked in and began laughing when he saw all of the cords hanging across the room in mid-air. I had accomplished quite a feat and was busy sweeping away.

One day a week turned into two days a week (this was also staggered with Jacob’s schedule). Jacob and I began leaving secret messages on the job site for each other. This was pretty fun, until it got carried away with insulting messages. I added the last straw when I left a hand with a single finger pointing up reading, “You’re number 1 Jacob!” that was made out of leftover plumber’s putty.

My dad found it before Jacob did. No explanations are needed here.

It wasn’t long before I started working with dad everyday. Jacob and I ended up working together a lot. We graduated from sweeping to insulating and began making an actual hourly wage. I hated it.

I hated getting up early. I hated being in the severe heat, or the severe cold, or the rain or the snow. I hated not being able to play with my friends when they came over. I hated that if my friends stayed long enough to see me when I got home, that I would show up when they were in the middle of a game with my sisters and I would be wearing dirty work clothes and would be too exhausted to play. It was humiliating for me.

The day I turned thirteen, I had to go to work as well. I don’t know why, but I thought that I would get the day off to hang out with my friends and have fun. But no. I was destined to sit and sand logs on the hottest day of May.

Kelly had gotten really sick at this point and so he wasn’t coming to work very often. Subsequently, neither did Jacob. He was still quite involved in the job process, but by the end of May, 2000, his cancer had gotten so bad that he was not able to come to work at all. A week after I turned 13, Kelly would pass away.

As I was sitting on these gigantic logs and sanding them to make them look new, my mind kept going over what thirteen should mean and how people should care. I couldn’t believe it. It was the first birthday that I have had to spend at work. It drove me crazy with anger. I felt abandoned, unloved and used. Not only did I hate my job (I didn’t consider it a job for several years, but it was something that dad made me do), but I hated that my first day as a teenager was being spent at the place that I hated the most.

Looking back, I can see that I was really immature. After all, I was a twelve year old that was just one day into his thirteenth year. My attitude became a breeding ground for intense hatred and anger. This is something that I still deal with. For years I resented how I was made to work everyday of my youth. I became the person that my dad relied on completely to get the job done. It was a lot of responsibility for a thirteen year old. It was a lot of work. But I made it through much stronger and smarter.

When I got home that day after working very hard and having been intensely bitter over having to work, I was greeted with friends, my grandparents, and a cake that was made to look like the sinking Titanic (oh my God how cool!).

I am loved.

It was a great evening and I had a lot of fun. I went into that day thinking that I had been the unluckiest teenager in the world, but as it turned out, thirteen can be rather lucky.

Liebing is a German Name

I come from a massive family. My Dad was the youngest of nine children, and his mother was one of twelve children. My Dad’s aunt and uncles seemed to be competing to see who could have the most children. After all, it was the 1950’s and they were a farming bunch.

No help needed here!

I don’t even know most of my cousins. However, most of the cousins I do know I have grown up with and have been very close to them throughout my childhood. These cousins were on my Mom’s side, which is also a nicely sized family. My last name, Liebing, seems to raise eyebrows of new acquaintances. In response to their puzzled look, I offer up the little bit of information that I know about my last name; “Its German,” I say, “It means ‘darling’ I believe.” Then there is usually a little laughter associated with some Nazi joke. Aw, the German Legacy.

Growing up, I was constantly being made fun of because of my family. Most of the fundamentalist Christians that I had considered my friends as a young teen had moved with their parents from the western side of Washington State to “escape the sin.” They were not all that involved with their extended families mainly because Grandma did not appreciate the fact that her grand-daughters were parading around in home-made prairie dresses and schooling at home (learning to sew more dresses and to cook with unleavened bread). It wasn’t as though my parent’s extended family didn’t disapprove also at first, but as it turns out, they were close enough to the extreme Republican fringe to be able to accept a little religious crazy. Pretty much any story that a friend of mine might share with me, I seemed to have a similar experience to share with them involving one of my cousins. This became a rather obvious pattern that was quickly noted by my friends and was used to get some laughs… at my expense. That was, in fact, how I preferred to make people laugh. It was a nice little self-preservation mechanism that is still a part of my social psyche.

A typical conversation with me during my early teens would go something like this:

     “I was so excited to actually win something!”

My friend Autumn might say about a little homemade prize that my mother put together for the Frisbee tossing competition during one of the feast days. Don’t ask.

     “I have never won anything. But, my cousin won a brand new Toyota pickup truck at a country music concert and then won a bunch of the door prizes at the NRA fund raising dinner!”

After a couple confused facial expressions, I might have felt awkward enough to expand on those thoughts even though the little Trevor in my head was screaming “NOOOO! Stop talking!”

     “The rest of my cousins and family think he must be incredibly lucky or something.”

Then I immediately begin to panic because I mentioned the word 'lucky' and could offend some of the people around me because 'luck' is not something that Yaweh or Yashua have sanctioned and suggests that there is some other force that controls fate. Oh dear, I should not mention fate either.

Autumn, or Carrie, or perhaps Serena would then make the comment:

    “Do you ever talk about anything other than your cousins?”

Then everyone would start laughing and I would have to say something like:

    “That’s so funny! Because one of my cousins said that very same thing to me last weekend!”

I am just that cool.

I was however, always very popular with the girls in this Christian fellowship that we called; “The Meeting House.” I suppose that isn’t what we called the fellowship but rather, the building in which the fellowship gathered. In a casual reference, I think I might have, in a conversation with one of my cousins, referred to the congregation as “The Meeting House People…” Little did I know at the time that many gay men, just like me, were also very popular with girls. I was a closet gay and they were closet hags. This idea makes me laugh now.

My closet hags and I spent most of the time gossiping about the different key families of the Meeting House people. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the Liebing family was one of those key families. I can’t imagine the gossip that was floating around behind out backs. However, knowing some of the stories I was soaking up about the other families, I think I have a pretty good idea. I don’t think that I realized that my family was one of the key families is because I was so caught up with trying to keep up with the key families. My family could be so embarrassing for me sometimes.

There were the Robertsons,  the Keyes, the Hecks, the Hoechers, and the Bauers. Later the McGuiers would also become one of the key families toward the peak of the Meet House’s life span. As far as I know there are people that still meet there, but it isn’t anything close to what it was when all the aforementioned families attended.  The McGuiers really kind of pushed themselves into the spotlight. They really weren’t welcome in the top tiers of the Meeting House people, especially in my eyes. They were ex-Mormons.

I mean… c’mon… Mormons. I honestly didn’t know what Mormons were except my Dad said that they left because he was pretty sure the church was trying to get Mr. McGuire to take a second wife.

But, much like a hostile take-over, they rapidly moved in as a pillar of the congregation. They, like many Mormons, had a huge family. Many of the older children of the family were young men between the ages of 22 and 17. Also, like a lot of Mormon families, these young men were beautiful. Beautiful and they were all very manly men. Athletic, popular, funny, witty and completely Christian they were. Who could compete? I might have been secretly attracted to them, but that wasn’t why I didn’t like them. I didn’t like them because I had this suspicion that they were a bunch of poseurs. I do not know why I thought that, but I got a strong feeling from the way they spoke so confidently and securely. Anyone that was that into the Lord must have been a fraud. They were just a little too churchy.

With this lifestyle, it felt very different to be around family. My closest cousins were much more secular compared to my Meeting House friends. Skyler had internet, went to public school and had friends that told vagina jokes and played Nintendo games. Zane and Blane had big souped-up pick-ups and a lot of guns and liked to hunt. Blane especially liked to hunt. Every word that comes out of his mouth, even to this day, is about a gun or hunting. Katie also went to public school, but as an only child, she was sheltered a lot more by her parents. The friends she had from school were more into FAA and 4H instead of video games and boys. These were country girls (most of which did not really live in the country) that wore cowboy boots and shirts that expressed their support for the NRA or something else completely red... like abstinence.

On a rare occasion, these two diverse worlds would collide. These occasions were usually my or my siblings birthdays. The Robertsons never came, nor did the Keyes or the Hecks. The Hecks would never come to something like my birthday party mostly because they believed that celebrating one’s birthday was a pagan tradition and they thought that everyone was beneath them and their holiness. Also, none of their children were my age.

The family that did come to my birthday parties was the Reynolds family. They had two sons, Gideon and Josiah, which were close to my age. Gideon was the younger one of the two and was most likely ADHD. Josiah was a very depressed and with-drawn young man most likely because he had to live with his father, Mark. Josiah hardly smiled, never joked and liked to make secret codes and code-names to disguise the secret spy he wanted to be. Part of his secret spy dream was to help spread the truth about Yashua and to help take down the evil U.S. government. I don’t think that I would ever smile either if I had to live with Mark as a father.

I can remember one night, as a young child, listening to Mark rant about how all government employees and homosexuals should be disfigured and tortured to death and how he would do it to ensure the maximum amount of pain. I didn’t realize that I had become transfixed on the things that he was saying, but he looked over and saw how I was about to throw up. He then bellowed:

    “Get him outta here please.”

It wasn’t so much of a shout, as a sarcastically slurred message that really said:

    “I cant believe this little faggot-to-be doesn’t have the stomach to hear what needs to be done.”

That, or it said:

    “Why is he even in here to begin with?”

As if it was completely absurd that I would be sitting on my living room sofa. It didn’t help that Mark is an absolutely massive human being with a voice that echoes even while he whispers. His head alone was the size of a five-gallon bucket that loomed 6’7” over the floor. He is rather intimidating and I fear the thought that I might someday, run into him again.

Being a part of this circle was something I never completely adjusted to. I liked my life as I was growing up with my cousins in my pre-Meeting House era.

I had felt normal.

When my parents decided to home school my sisters and I, it was a little hard for me to understand or comprehend. That proved to be a lot easier to get used to over the idea that Grandma and Grandpa did not like what my parents were getting involved with when they started going to the Meeting House. They felt it was a cult and that they would brainwash my parents, my siblings and myself. They were right. The changes made me feel uprooted. No more Christmas or Easter. No Halloween and no pork. It was so embarrassing to tell the absent-minded aunt that you couldn’t eat the bacon and to see the “oh right. I forgot” look on her face as she rolled her eyes and started to make something else. 

And that was my Mom’s family. Dad’s family was a little different. They took much more offense to the idea that my Mom and Dad were schooling their children at home. They felt that we would become socially retarded and would be cheated out of a bright future filled with education and peer interactions. They also did not like that idea that Mom and Dad started to believe that White people were God’s chosen people, instead of the Jews. This is a little odd now that I think of it.
 
After all, Liebing is a German name.

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Obama & Health

New York Times

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This is something that is completely confusing me at the moment. Virtually every American honestly believes that our health care system is in serious need of major improvement. Most of us have had many experiences with not being covered, or having to fight with insurance companies to give us the coverage that we thought we were paying exorbitant amounts of money for. Millions of Americans do not have access to health insurance and can be financially devastated when sickness strikes. Yet, Republicans in the House and Senate are standing up to say "No!"

What are they saying "no" to? Taxes increases? Yes. Government control over health care? Yes. Responsibility of insurance companies? You got it. They have taken great strides in standing up to say no to anything that the Democrats of put forward. That makes sense. After all, this is a two-part system of government. Great! So what is there plan to help the millions of un-insured people and the greatly declining quality of American health care? This is the crazy part: they want it to stay they same. Republican Tom Coburn (Senator from Texas) said on "Meet the Press" this morning that the U.S. has the greatest health care in the world. Talk about out of touch. We are ranked lower that any other indrustrialized nation by the World Health Organiztion. Ouch.

I really do not want to let Democrats completely off of the hook either here. Democrats, the leaders in health care reform advocacy since the early 1990's have also dropped the ball. With a huge majority in both the House and the Senate, one might think that it would be a little bit easier to create a reform bill that actually reformed something. Now we have the White House saying that they might be OK with dropping the Public Option on the bill. Taking that single provision away from health care reform turns this into just health insurance reform. Will it lower prices? Maybe a little. Is it a solution to the problem? Its a small bandage. In my opinion, a public option is only a slightly larger, small bandage.

What we need in this country, is the change that we all voted for. We need our elected officials to stand up to the screaming, lobbying, bought-and-paid-for "No!" and do what is right. Money should not be the difference between having good health care or not. Human beings should be more important than money. If Republicans are seriously worried about protecting unborn children, then why are they saying no to helping pregnant woman and children in poverty health coverage? Why are Republicans against health care?

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