Messages By: wickiepoo

I feel bad for people who are made to feel that they are less human because of their differences. I am not gay and cannot imagine how it feels to be that way and want to change. I cannot imagine being the homosexual who is being discriminated against and ridiculed because he/she is different and the people around him do not understand the workings of your mind and soul. It is not my place to judge whether you are wrong or right or if it's even about who is wrong or who is right. There are other sins mentioned in God's Word, and they are all wicked in His eyes, and no one who practices them will enter Heaven, whether it be homosexuality, drunkenness, murder, lying, stealing, adultery, rape, whatever.

What I will say is this....God hates all sin, whatever it is, and however we try to dress it up and make it acceptable. But He loves us so very much that even while we (mankind) were living in sin He sent His only Son, Jesus, to pay the eternal price for our sin, that anybody from any walk of life who will confess their sins and acknowledge their need for forgiveness and salvation may have it simply by calling upon the Name of the Lord.

I am also a big girl. I have my own issues and I feel that untill you've lived someone's life and experienced their pain you can't possibly know what you're talking about when criticizing them and trying to tell them how to do things to get better. I noticed a few things about John. First of all, hon, the mouth....there is never any excuse for using bad language and you need to clean that up big time...so does everyone else, actually. Second, whining and complaining about things doesn't help any. While I know very well what it takes to try and get a humongous body in and out of a shower, there are other things that can be done. Pull a chair up to the bathroom sink and bathe with a wash rag or something. Use powder that a doctor could recommend in all the nooks and crannies that can help with moisture absorption and odor control. And if you cannot do housework, hire somebody. I'm on disability and sometimes I have to sacrifice in other areas financially, but I will get somebody in before letting it become a total pig sty, even with two cats.

The other side of that is that unless you have ever weighed 500 pounds you can't possibly know what it's like. I've weighed 200 pounds and I now weigh close to 500 pounds. Walking is hard, standing on my feet long enough to do much of anything is hard, and breathing or being social or anything else you can think of is hard. Someone once said that whenever you see a person seriously obese you need to look beyond the weight. Eating is often a drug of choice used to medicate pain or other emotions, and is often as addictive as alcohol to an alcoholic. It is not simply a matter of getting some self-discipline and making up our minds to do it. Trust me, if it was that easy I would have done it years ago. I imagine John feels the same way. Those people do not have to brow beat him about his hygiene or his "laziness". He is well aware of the problems he has and probably deeply hurt and feels very defeated about all of it. Somewhere down under all that fat is a scared little boy crying out for acceptance and love and for somebody to save his life...enter God and Dr. Phil. Based on what I have seen on his shows, if anybody in this world can help John get a grip, Dr. Phil will do it or find the right people who can. Thanks, Dr. Phil, for opening our eyes to acceptance and compassion.

I think, in a perfect world, there is no such thing as too many cats...or dogs...or other animals that are cute and fuzzy. I remember a time when I came home from college we had 4 cats, 6 dogs, a persian guinea pig, a welsh pony staked out in our front yard, two ducks, a number of acquarium tanks from school (my dad was the science teacher), a cormrant took up residence by the pool and a blue parakeet flew in from nowhere...and we lived about 200 yards from the town bowling alley. On the other hand, the pony found a home on a horse farm down the road, one of the ducks went to live at Homossassa Springs, the parakeet died, the cormrant decided it didn't like chlorinated water and cooked fish so it left, and the acquariums went back to school once the holidays were over.

I love animals with a passion and I understand that lady deeply. I have two cats at present, having just found homes for three strays this summer. I tend to take in every stray that shows up  and find a home for it. Mom used to say we ran a halfway house for strays. I understand the need to take care of them and the heart break at the very idea of letting them fend for themselves in cold or bad weather, go hungry or unloved and it breaks my heart to see this lady do this. While I do, as stated, understand how she feels, she needs to see that unless she can afford to hire people to help with feeding, watering, grooming, vaccinating, spaying, neutering, etc., she is doing these babies a grave injustice. Contrary to popular belief, cats are not as independent as you might think. They need love and attention and they need brushing on a regular basis, especially the long-haired ones, because of the fur balls.  She needs to either move the cats to another, legal area and hire people to properly take care of them, or find homes for most of them, though I wouldn't limit her to four if she can handle them decently.

On the other hand, if her neighbors are calling Animal Control behind her back or feeding them antifreeze to poison them, then her neighbors ought to be made to drink the stuff and see how it makes them feel. I may agree that she has too many cats and too little assistance to take care of them, but I do not hold with any kind of animal cruelty at all. You think it's okay to poison animals just because you don't like them? You drink the poison. Do you beat your pets? Let somebody beat you and see how you like it. See how you would like being tossed out a car window or left out in 30 degree weather in the rain.

So while I agree that the lady needs to get some help with her cats, I also strongly say that her neighbors better leave them alone and not hurt them. For one thing, this lady obviously feels that nobody can take better care of them than she can or love them more.  I understand that feeling because I feel the same way and lose sleep over any I see that I think need loving.;

I never heard of unschooling before, but home schooling can be a good thing. In home schooling the parent teaches the child using a curriculum provided by a home school program. The kids may work at their own pace but they have to do homework and take exams just like regular school. These tests are evaluated by the home school people  and they make the decision whether the child has earned a promotion to the next grade level. Home schooling is also a viable alternative for those children with illnesses or defects who cannot and should not be mainstreamed in public school. A child with Asperger's syndrome, for instance, may learn better in a quiet, private setting instead of with other children, and will get more personal one on one attention.

For those who do not want to put their children in public school or home school them, try a private Christian school.  The ABEKA system many of these schools use is vastly superior to the curriculum used in public school, and the children still have the chance to do school things and interact with other children and take part in programs, etc.

This unschooling thing sounds weird and like an excuse not to make the child to to school. That will get the parent put in jail in Tennessee and Florida. Dr. Phil is correct. Children do not have the ability to make their own decisions and predict the outcome. They have to be taught. Morals and family values, the difference between right and wrong, their faith in God should come from home, but the education and development of their minds, ability to socially interact with others and teamwork, sportsmanship, these things generally take place more in school.

Going to school can be dangerous these days, especially with gangs and drugs, etc. On the other hand, while there have been shootings and violence in schools, it doesn't happen everywhere or everyday. People have focused in on the minority situation and panicked over it.

I am in favor of the school system. My parents were teachers, my grandmother was a professor and my sister is a teacher. My father was a band director and coached JV basketball. Actually, even in retirement he is still coaching basketball. That the quality of education has declined is tragic, and perhaps the system needs to be reworked, but it's still a good system if you put good qualified teachers in and give them back their power. Yes, folks, I mean discipline. The day they took paddling out of the mix was the day they signed the death warrant of the school system. Teachers cannot teach adequately if the children can act out and know there's nothing the teacher can do about it.

I thought the judge's creative punishment idea was a good one. It was one my dad often subscribed to. Once when my sister and I got in trouble, our punishment was that he gave my sister a toothbrush and me a hairbrush and made us get down on our hands and knees to "brush" the patio and driveway...and it was a windy day! It's funny now, but it's one we remembered. If humiliation and embarassment is all those folks face instead of jail time, they are lucky and should count their blessings. They are criminals, or criminal-wannabes, after all.  If he really did make a woman spend the night in the woods during winter because she dumped a litter of helpless kittens and left them out there to fend for themselves, well, that wasn't harsh enough. Creative maybe, but not harsh enough. It takes a cold-hearted, mean-spirited, cruel person do do such a thing. If she treats animals like that, what does she do with people? Anything she does to hurt an animal should have to experience herself.

As for that family, they missed something somewhere on the parenting train. Based on my understanding of family life, the parents run things, not the children. That's ridiculous. When I was growing up my daddy ran things with mom second in command and if he said jump you didn't ask why you asked how high. Punishment was sometimes creative, sometimes the usual time outs or grounding, but most effective were spankings. It's called applying the board of education to the seat of understanding and if we disobeyed my folks and even some teachers made sure our seats understood clearly that disobedience and other rebellious, disrespetive behavior would not be tolerated. Heavens, if I had thrown a punch at my dad he would have had me sitting on pillows for days!

Whether you believe in God or not, one of the best commandments he gave to us was that children are supposed to obey their parents. It's a sad day when kids are beating up their parents and have no more respect for them than these kids showed.