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If you were a kid in the sixties that went to a Catholic school, then at least once a year you saw a movie about missionaries.  Those selfless, giving people that went deep into the most remote areas of the world to spread the message of God.

The films were usually shown at the end of the day, and back then they were a grainy reenactment in black and white.  Every film ended with some poor soul up to their armpits in quicksand because they didn’t heed the Bible or scoffed at some foreigner trying to change their ways.  When we got a little older, the movies upped their game and would end with quicksand and a serpent because scaring the crap out of kids is the best way to get them to love Jesus.

The only way to save a person from that kind of fate was to donate to the missionaries, and I’d come tearing home from school yelling “MOM WE HAVE TO GIVE THE PAGANS MONEY!!!”

Like every other big family back then sending their kids to private school, there wasn’t any extra money so Mom would say, “Look under the beds and couch cushions.  You’re bound to come up with something.”  I’d crawl around the floor with a flashlight and under the beds then rifle through all the pockets of the coats crammed in the closet.  The next day I would go to school and hand over my fistful of coins to my nun teacher to SAVE THE PAGANS.

I was absolutely sure that I would die in quicksand one day.  In the dramatic telling of the missionaries and their very important work, nobody ever told me that the likelihood of that happening is about 0%.

But, Lordy, I have made my own quicksand and it consists of fear and doubt.

Whether it be employment or writing I push down my passion and talent because I eventually hear that voice that says, “Yeah, ummm…..you’re not that good.”  I’ve gotten a little better in the last few years because a post-50 life comes with a loudly ticking clock, but why, oh why do I repeat the same mistakes over and over?   In looking for a job if there is one qualification that I don’t have the skill set for I don’t even try.  Never mind that I could rock the rest of it without a problem, I am the one who always holds me back.  If I write something that has a lukewarm response (because maybe people have busy lives and can’t respond even though it may have resonated with them) then I think I should just give this game up.

*********

I have worked with this woman over the years and in several different stores who is about twenty years my junior.  In my retail days her and I loved to tear the store apart and redo it, and in the process have the most spirit-filled, deep conversations.  To say I adore her would be an understatement

Last year we worked together again and she was managing two stores with about ten employees.  If you needed time off for anything and requested it in the “princess book” she would accommodate you.  One day when we were working together and she was trying to put this massive schedule puzzle in place (over Christmas, no less) I said, “You know I really appreciate that you do that for us, but why don’t you just make the schedule and let everybody else figure it out if it doesn’t work for them?”

“Because,” she said, “I understand that everyone has a passion outside of this job that makes their heart skip a beat, and if I give you the time you need to pursue that you’ll be a happier person when you’re here.”

She should be running the world, don’t you think?

***********

Recently, I actually heard a story about quicksand.  Instead of fighting against it, you should lean your back into it.  Your legs will eventually surface because contrary to what you might think there is a lot of water in quicksand.  Your fate is not sealed if you find yourself in that predicament.

The missionaries in the movies I saw never elaborated on that one useful piece of information.  Perhaps they didn’t know, but the lesson I wish they taught to all those watchful eyes in the darkened school gymnasium was to stop fighting and lean back into your passion.

Not only will it save you……..it will take you to the promised land.

                                      

Many years ago, we took a trip from Kansas City to Washington State to see Mark’s mom.  It was a three day trek with three kids and long before portable DVDs were the recommended travel necessity to entertain restless, little passengers.  The kids were troopers and we would do the trip two more times over the years before summer schedules and work commitments no longer allowed for three weeks off.

Mark was all about making “good” time and so stopping to see anything for longer than necessary interfered with his self-imposed schedule.  This came to a head at a motel bathroom in Wyoming when I pulled him in and yelled, “We are missing everything because of this stupid time thing you keep harping about.  We are going through the most scenic parts of this country and all we’ve seen is the interstate.”

He saw the tourist light and the next day we veered off of I-90 West and went to Yellowstone.  Beautiful, spectacular Yellowstone.

Mark went to graduate school with several guys who have ended up at the University of Washington, and so we left the youngest two with my mother-in-law for a few days and took Maggie with us to Seattle.  On the way back to Spokane, Mark said it would be an easy jaunt to Mt. St. Helens and wouldn’t that be something to see.

The jaunt turned out to be about 100 miles from Seattle to Prescott, and then the most harrowing drive up a mountain that I have ever experienced.  Or maybe my one and only mountain experience seeing as how I’ve lived most of my life in Illinois and Kansas and mountains are as foreign to us as oceans.

There was not a guardrail to be seen as we hugged the mountain through curves and switchbacks.  My fear of heights went into overdrive and while Mark was commenting on the scenery I was screaming, “TWO HANDS!!!!  TWO HAND ON THE WHEEL!!!”  It didn’t help.  Nothing helped my anxiety and at one point I put my head down and started doing Lamaze which was just as worthless at several thousand feet as it was in three different delivery rooms.

Maggie, who was sitting in the back and has her father’s sense of adventure, became the mom and tried to soothe my frazzled nerves with everything she had in her ten-year-old arsenal.  When we finally made it to the safety of the visitors center and looked out it was the most breathtaking sight.  The devastation seventeen years after that volcano was mind boggling.  Tens of thousands of trees were flattened like twigs in every direction.  The trees that weren’t flattened were stripped bare of life.  There has never been a single picture I’ve seen of that mountainside that comes close to what it actually looks like in person.

By that time amongst the locals, things were definitely looking up.  The new growth was a source of amazement and pride and a sign that Mother Nature, in all of her fury, eventually comes back full circle with new life.

I had trouble sharing their enthusiasm because in my eyes I saw more of what was gone than what was coming up, but I didn’t live there.  Mt. St. Helens wasn’t my view out the window.

These many years later at home in Kansas, my view out the window remains flat and usually uninteresting, but this week I squealed at the familiar green leaves of the daffodils poking through the mud and dead leaves……..

……..and nature’s nod of what lies ahead reveals itself to those who are looking for hope.

As I laid in bed the other night listening to my snoring husband, I heard a thud.  A loud, repeated thud.  I tried to ignore it and go to sleep but something sounded like it was trying to get in.  When The Big Daddy woke up to go to the bathroom, I asked him if he thought that maybe one of the cats had gotten locked inside the garage.

Knight in shining armor that he is he got up, went outside, lifted the garage door and called the cat.  “It wasn’t that,” he said as he climbed back into bed, and for a few minutes all was calm and quiet.

And then it started back up.  Louder and bangier than ever, and as much as The Big Daddy tried to ignore it even he knew something was going on.  “It’s probably a critter hiding in the garage,” he said and took a flashlight as his only weapon.

I thought it was Bigfoot and I was so scared I got on Facebook.

The Big Daddy was gone for what seemed to be a long while.

When he came in he said that the culprit had been flushed out.  A big raccoon on the roof that laid flat and still when under the glare of his probing flashlight.  Somebody’s been taking life-saving seminars from the possums.

Still as could be it flattened itself against the roof, not budging.  A black and gray hump against a black and gray roof.  Move along, Mr. Homeowner.  Go back to your Mrs.  Nothing to see here.

Mark threw a dirt clod at the varmint which didn’t faze it in the least.  He kept at it until he said, “I got one that broke apart like shrapnel when it hit the roof and that did the trick.  He got up and climbed up over the chimney to the other side of the roof.”

My Rambo.  Swoon.

“A raccoon on the roof?  What the heck was he doing up there?” I asked when he finished telling the story.

“It looks like he was trying to eat the siding, but it ran off.  Don’t worry, I doubt we’ll be seeing that guy again.”

And then my Rambo went right back to sleep but worrying is what I do, especially in the middle of the night.  I laid there rolling the facts around in my head.  A raccoon on the roof.  How did it get up there?  I had no idea they could climb that high.  Eating the siding?  I thought they tipped over garbage cans to get their dinner.  What if it busted through the walls and got into bed with us?  Would I have a heart attack and die?  In his loneliness would Mark turn to his new roommate for companionship?

The following afternoon I noticed the Critter Control truck at my next door neighbor’s house and went over to get the deets.   “Five nights,” my neighbor said.  “Five nights we’ve been up because of something banging around in the garage.”

“Us, too,” I said.  “I was up until three in the morning.  It was so loud.”  While we were talking Mr. Critter Tech came out to his truck and gave her the news.

“You’ve got a raccoon getting in through your vent trying to make a new home.  I’ve set a trap so your problem should be over soon.”

She introduced me to him and I told my raccoon story.  “You want me to take a look while I’m here,” he asked.  Of course I did, but I was already certain my problem was far less severe than my neighbors since I had a raccoon looking for a one-night stand.  She had a stalker.

Turns out I had the exact same problem.  Mr. Critter Tech showed me where the raccoon had been busy tearing a shingle off the house and bending the grate of the vent to get into our attic space.

“Trap him,” I calmly and coldly said without even asking what it cost.

It costs plenty and after I wrote the check I called my mom to tell her the story of the Homesteading Raccoon and how my husband was going to have a fit over trapping an animal even though it had specs and claws to expand our living space.

“Oh, you had to do it,” she said.  ‘You can’t have wild animals with rabies trying to get in your attic for crying out loud.”

“I know, Mom, but Mark is going to be really mad about it when he gets home and I tell him.”

“Tell him I said you should do it for all that’s worth.  Blame me.”

“I’ll use that as my last resort, Mom, because I don’t think he cares what either of us think about trapping a raccoon.”

“You’re probably right,” she said.  “You know what Lou Manfredini says about keeping raccoons out of your house?”

“Who?”

“Lou Manfredini.  The fix-it guy on WGN.  He says if you want to keep raccoons out of your attic to play Spanish music.  He says raccoons hate Spanish music.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“That’s what he says and he’s got his own show.  Had one for years so he would know.  He says that when they hear that Spanish music they keep moving along.  I don’t know what it is that they hate about it.  Anyhow, you get in your attic and put a radio up there.  Tune it to some Spanish station and your raccoon problem will be over.”

“Well, we don’t have an attic we can access.  It’s the space between the garage and the roof that is problem and you can only get in through the outside.”

“If the raccoon can get in so can you so find a way and start playing some Spanish music before you’ve got the whole family moving in.”

We hung up.  I weighed my options.  Maybe Mom and Lou Manfredini were right.  I had a Frito Bandito to chase away, but was it mariachi, salsa or merengue that would do the trick?

I can’t remember the first time I met Rie.  It seems like that should be seared into my brain but it isn’t.  All I know is that she became one of my favorite people to work with at my favorite job.  There are many reasons for this.  She was smart, funny, an elementary school principal during her daytime hours and gorgeous.  Stop you in your tracks gorgeous.  As the mother of three, she was also a caretaker.  It wasn’t all that unusual for one of us Natties to show up for a Saturday morning shift slightly hung over, and when I was having an especially rough morning she ran to the bagel shop and came back with a huge Coke.

“This will do the trick,” she said.  “Drink it up and you’ll feel better soon.  It works for me every time.”

Besides all of those endearing qualities she could be snarky, and Lord help the woman who agonized over a clothing purchase.  Rie spent a career working in some of the toughest schools in the city.  She had no patience for faux agonizing over something so ridiculous.  She’d seen plenty of the real kind on her job.  She even lived some of it herself.  If you had the unfortunate luck of waiting on someone like that, she’d come by on the pretense of straightening a rack and whisper in your ear “martyr” in proper, dramatic Masterpiece Theater British.

When that store suddenly closed, a few of us went to work at another equally funky boutique.  This one was a bit more structured than the last one, and our days of having a glass of wine and talking books on a cold February night when the store was desolate came to an end.

After a little more than a year, I left to work closer to my neighborhood but Rie remained.  I frequently would stop in and last year I worked there again over the Christmas season.  Over the course of seven months I got my discount back and my weekly Rie fix.  All was good in my little world again.

In a stroke of blessed karma for a deserving person, a manager’s job opened up in Santa Fe and Rie jumped at the chance to change directions and start her life over.  I was invited to a farewell party for her along with many others in her circle.

Rie described her life so far in Santa Fe.  A great little adobe place with deep windowsills to put her chotchkes.  A town where she walks everywhere.  Back and forth to work and out to one of the many great restaurants for dinner.

She said that the best part of Santa Fe is looking up at night.  “The sky is full of stars,” she said.  “And every night I look up at them and think of each of you.”

I don’t know if anybody besides me was crying, but I remember two years ago coming back from a sunset cruise in Mexico and as we headed to the parking lot I looked up at the sky.  I’d never seen so many stars in my life.  I remember when Mark and the kids and I were with his mom at Loon Lake in Washington State and up above the tall pines were thousands of stars.  I remember having dinner on the patio of a restaurant in Leawood, Kansas with my neighbors and saying, “Can you believe all the stars out tonight?”

I didn’t know we shared a fondness for the night sky, and  though I don’t know when, I am certain that I will cross paths with Rie again as we have criss-crossed for many years.

Until that happens I will seek out the starry starry nights in my regular life and thank the lucky ones for sending that dearie into my life.

It was with fear, second thoughts and one day before the deadline that I submitted a piece to Listen To Your Mother for the Kansas City show in May.

My inner dialog leading up to that point waffled between “it’s time to do something that scares the hell out of you” to “you are out of your mind if you think you can pull this off”.  The latter needed a daily punch in the face.

A few weeks later I got an email inviting me for an audition.

I was at work when I found out and wanted to shout it from my cube, but let’s just say that my blog and upper management have met and the less I talk about it at work the better.  But I’ve got a phone and I texted and emailed my significant others on the down low with my news.

I worked on edits and practicing right up to and including that day.  Eye contact, baby, I told myself.  Eye contact and ditch the shaky voice you usually reserve for your very limited public speaking because it scares you so much you’d rather get extensive dental work than do that.

Oh wait, I have had several weeks of extensive dental work.

I woke that morning at 3:30 a.m. and never went back to sleep.  The audition was at 6:00 p.m. so I had a long day of working myself into a tizzy.  Instead, I finished painting the downstairs bedroom.  Every hour I’d stop and recite my piece.  I googled tips for public speaking and made mental notes.  I talked to my brother who said, “Remember what Dad always said.  Take your time.  Don’t rush.  You’ll be fine.”

Oh, yeah, Dad.  He was a great public speaker.  Channel Dad.

I arrived at the appointed time, met the Church Lady who was ushering auditioners through the process and completed the paperwork.  I went to the bathroom.  I sipped water to quench my parched throat and then I started talking to the kindly Church Lady.

I talked about this long, cold winter, global warming, drought, dissipating snow as opposed to slowly melting snow, where Mark works and getting a grant these days.  I asked her how long she’d been at that church, how long was she volunteering that night, was she volunteering on Saturday.

She was not volunteering on Saturday and so I asked her if she had other plans, does she like to make a big breakfast on Saturday morning, was she a bacon and eggs or waffle kind of person.  The price of bacon lately, I said.  Aye carumba.  I asked her if she’d been to Listen To Your Mother last year.  She had.  I tried to recall every piece I heard and asked her which one was her favorite.

Remember, I said, how there were all kinds of kids down there for prom and parking was so bad.  It was awful.  The parking lots.  No spaces in the parking lots.

This took place over ten minutes and then I was called in.  All those jittery nerves I had got dumped on that poor woman and I went in and read my piece without any of the shaky shakes I normally have when I am required to read anything I’ve written.

I texted my sister afterwards and told her how it went.  How Church Lady got the full force assault of Chatty Kathy.

“Word vomit,” my sister texted back.  “It’s what we do.”

All. The. Time.

Somewhere in Kansas City is an innocent bystander still trying to wipe global warming and dissipating snow off the front of her shirt.  Oh, and the lack of parking spaces that Saturday night in May.  Can’t forget those.

I didn’t.

I don’t know when being educated and articulate became so contemptible in this country, but in a blaze of stupid glory we have been waving the idiot flag with gusto.

Was it when Sarah Palin couldn’t name a single publication that she reads on a regular basis and her supporters felt that she was being unfairly criticized by the left?  Or was it when the Housewives of Orange County/Atlanta/New York/New Jersey/Beverly Hills started enacting a vapid, empty life devoid of anything of substance (save for collagen and Botox) on Bravo seven days a week?  Or when 24-hour cable news needed to fill a whole lot of time and so they’d drag anybody in to offer an opinion whether they were qualified or not.

I used to shake my head at these kind of people and pity them for their ignorance, because it turns out you really can get pregnant when you’re raped.  That expelling of rape sperm is completely made up and when you go on an interview and start saying stuff like that you look like a fool.

Except in this country you don’t any more.  You have your fan base who will fight to the bitter end saying that you were misunderstood, and a media who is complicit in repeating the myth.  Months later, the race for the U.S. Senate seat is still too close to call which to the even minimally informed person seems ludicrous.

My fool limit has reached its max.  The Kansas House passed a bill to make it legal to not serve gays.  Though it didn’t make it to the Senate I’m pretty sure it will come back in a different form because dumb people just mix the sentences up and present it again, much like the way they answered the essay questions on the history final in high school.

Arizona, not to be outdone on the stupid meter, passed a bill making it legal to not serve anybody you don’t like.  The governor is being coy on whether or not she’ll sign it.  Seeing as how they are hosting the Superbowl next year this should be very interesting.  Even exceptionally dumb elected officials know that money talks. 

At a party we were at on Saturday, a woman was telling me about a conversation she had with an acquaintance who joked that she went out for drinks with friends and completely forgot she had a loaded gun in her purse.  Isn’t that hilarious?  Wouldn’t that be a hoot if it went off in a crowded restaurant?

Which brings me back to Kansas and its quest for ignorance superiority.  One representative has introduced a bill making it legal for a teacher/principal/babysitter/daycare provider to spank a child up to ten times.  Marks, of course, could happen in the “disciplining” and would not be grounds for any criminal charges.

Many families are familiar with the dreaded relative that makes an appearance at Thanksgiving and sits at the table reminiscing about the good, old days when blacks knew their place, homosexuals got beaten straight, and the only Hispanics they ever saw was in National Geographic.  Thankfully, the onslaught of racism and homophobia is an annual event to be endured, and you can’t be baited into an argument if you’re shoving another piece of pumpkin pie into your mouth. 

Now that guy is your representative.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks here in Speckled Troutland.  A simple replacement of an old crown has turned into a saga of pain, infection, antiobiotics, barfy stomach due to antibiotics, allergic reaction to prescription oral rinse, and three trips to the dentist within a week.

Sheesh, I’m a weebly mess when I have to have my teeth cleaned so this has put me over the edge.  Or on the edge.

In my desperation to feel better, I said to The Big Daddy, “I can’t find my mouthguard.  Maybe that’s it.  Maybe since I haven’t been wearing it things have gotten worse.  Maybe I’m grinding that temporary to smithereens at night.”

He nodded.

“And my free sample of laser repair cream from Clinique.  It’s a little blue bottle.  Maybe it’s green.  Let’s call it a bluish green.  It says Laser Repair Cream on the front.  Have you seen that because I can’t find that either?  I really need that since this tooth is keeping me up every night.  It promises to make you look less haggy in two weeks if applied twice a day after moisturizing.”

He nodded.

“My mouthguard and my laser repair cream.  They’re both missing,” I said.  Or shrieked.  Or pounded my fists into the mattress.

The Big Daddy snapped to attention and offered this piece of sage advice, “It’s gotta be somewhere.”

“WHAT?  WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?  IT’S GOTTA BE SOMEWHERE?  DID YOU JUST SAY THAT?”

He did.  He said that.

Two weeks ago he had to drive to a big meeting and before he left I told him he needed to fill the tank.  Ten minutes later he called from the gas station because he had locked his keys in the car.  Friday he left his wallet here.  Friday night he left his keys at work.

That is but the tip of the iceberg of lost, misplaced items that he loses on a daily basis.  The things I mother him through.  Did you look in your briefcase?  Do you think you dropped it somewhere?  What about under the seat of the car?  Did you look there?  Did you go out to lunch today?  Maybe you left it at the restaurant.

And all I get in return is  “It’s gotta be somewhere.”

It is a given that I am grinding day and night.

After a perfect weekend with not one, but two parties, The Big Daddy and I were chatting on the way home from party #2.  The dinner party with the prime rib that we’ve talked about over and over because we talk about great meals with gusto, much like the local weatherman forecasting spring’s first whiff of tornadic activity.

The BD had to go and ruin the prime rib honeymoon I was enjoying by asking, “If you had to leave home and didn’t know when or if you were coming back and could only take two suitcases what would you put in them?”

Not only did this leave a sudden acidic taste in my mouth after such a delish meal, but this is the kind of question he normally only asks when there is a Republican in the White House.  Maybe 2016 already has him worried.

I am used to these sorts of thinly veiled panic attacks from him, though, and so I answered quickly and truthfully, “Photos and underpants.”

“Bwahahahahahahahaha,” he chuckled.  “No, really, what would you take?”

“Really, that is what I would take.  Photos of everybody I love so I can look at them and clean underpants to change into for the end times.  In case I realize I’m being left behind and you know, have an accident.”

He was being serious.  So was I.  We went back and forth like that for awhile but there really wasn’t anything else I could think of.

A knife to stab myself?

A Tide pod and Clorox to wash my underpants?

Floss?

Granola bars?

I am lightening my load around here lately.  There is a stack o’ crap in the basement that will be stickered and hauled out this spring for MY LAST GARAGE SALE EVER.  We are down to two vacuums instead of three.  I have pitched dried up paint cans by the dozen.  Have a dog?  Need a kennel?  Free for the taking.  There is a bag of clothes to donate and I’m still at it.  If it hasn’t gotten worn this winter, is too tight, too loose, too short or too tall it has gone in the bag.  I am being ruthless about getting rid of stuff.

Stuff.  Overwhelming stuff.

Last week my mom turned 86.  A darling, vibrant 86.  Believe me, we are well aware and enormously thankful that we have her and she is in good health.

If I’m forced out of my home and into the unknown, I’ll clutch her photo and my suitcase of clean underwear and forge on with hope, faith and a wicked sense of humor.  Just like she’s always shown me.

                                           .

Part of the dilemma of writing a blog is trying to determine which stories are yours to tell.  I could post something new every day, but most of the time the story belongs to somebody else and is not mine to tell.

This may be one of those times but I think on the day of big love it needs to be out there in the light.

Recently, I was with some friends and one of them invited a young mom over to join us for a glass of wine.  During the conversation, the mom said she was asked by another mom if she would be bringing Valentines to daycare.  It had never occurred to her and the other mom implied that it wasn’t an option.  “And not some cheap Target cards but something homemade.  Something Pinteresty.”

“How old are we talking here,” I asked.

“One. They’re one year olds.”

The other seasoned mom and I said, “Nononononononononono.”

“NO.  And don’t let anybody guilt you into that.”

That’s life in suburbia with our first world problems.

**********

I texted Maggie about going to the thrift store on Monday since we are both off for President’s Day.  She was up for it even though she had just gone.  One of her little 1st graders is newly homeless and so she went after work to buy him some clothes.

That is life on the other side of town with its real problems.

***********

Happy Valentine’s Day. 

Spread the love.

Ditch the cards.

Be somebody’s champion.

When we moved from Illinois to Maryland, I became accustomed to using the word “soda” instead of the Midwestern “pop.” 

When we moved from Maryland to Kansas and had been here all of three days, I was in a line at the grocery store and said to the woman ahead of me, “If you don’t mind I’m just going to put my soda up here.”

“We don’t say soda.  Where are you from?” she asked.

“We just moved from outside of Washington D.C.,” I replied.

“Oh honey,” she said, “you’re going to hate it here.”

I was amused and kind of scared and I have told that story a hundred times.

Kansas isn’t my sweet home Chicago nor is it the epicenter of world politics, but it has had its perks over the years and has felt like home.  When things go off the rails around here I have plenty of like-minded friends and we commiserate over that which make us crazy and homesick.

Things have been going off the rails a lot lately.

This week the Kansas House passed a bill making it legal for anyone to deny service to gays based on religious belief.  By religious belief they mean Christian because if there were ever a religion that is being oppressed it’s Christianity in America.  

You would think anything that discriminating would never get anywhere in a legit, legal process but this is Kansas, after all.

Proponents of the law say it was necessary because of a fear of lawsuits like the one filed in Oregon when a gay couple was denied service from a florist based on their orientation.

Are florists attracting such blockbuster business these days that they can turn down any business?  If you owned a floral shop and two guys came in with a whole lot of disposable income would you really tell them to go across town because they’re not your “kind”?

Or would you upsell them on boutonnieres like any florist worth their roses would do?

Across the state line Michael Sam stood up and said “Yep, I’m gay and I play football,” and sports enthusiasts cheered for the first guy gutsy enough to say those words out loud.

Here in Kansas we keep trying to shove those people back into the closet but they keep trickling out one by one.

So in a God-fearing state like this maybe a wedding planner need only ask “What would Jesus do?”  He would listen to his mother.  When the wedding in Cana was running short on wine his mother told him to do something about it.  He turned water into more adult beverages and the party got better.

Make the floral arrangements.  Bake the chicken and put it on a buffet with green beans and mashed potatoes.  Make sure the microphones are working for the toasts and that the bathrooms are spotless.  Watch the grooms dance with their mothers and have some fun in the back with your waitresses doing the electric slide.  Hire a bartender who is better at estimating consumption than the wedding consultants at Cana.

Make your customers so happy they tell everyone they know to use you, bank your profits and tip your employees for all their hard work.  Go home and tell your wife that if this keeps up maybe you can take a vacation this year. 

Whenever you doubt whether or not you are doing the right thing, open your Bible and remind yourself that all we have ever been asked is to “Love one another.”

And twenty years from now tell your grandkids about the time that there were people who tried to make it legal to hate others but you chose not to participate.