The GirlAlive Blog

The topic I’ve been avoiding…

I’ve had a very sucky week. On Tuesday, my husband’s best friend died. He was 39. When Husband first told me, I thought, “No, it can’t be that friend. He must know someone else by that name that died.” Utter disbelief. He had a chest infection for several weeks, and it managed to completely mask the symptoms of the pulmonary embolism that killed him.

I wish I had something wise to tell my husband. But there’s nothing that’s going to help. So I offer hugs whenever I can, and in the meantime I continue to avoid the topic. To that end, here’s a fabulous video of my niece and nephew. I miss them even more this week. Nothing better for distracting you from massive suck than a kid who is uncontrollably amused by the word “joey”.

Alana

How to Find the Best Wedding Dress for Cheap

One of my old high school classmates is wedding dress shopping, and it reminded me that I have not shared my gift for wedding bargains with the world. This is a lesson on how to find the perfect dress for a price you can afford.

Step 1: Go to any bridal shop and try on a bunch of styles of dresses. You’re just trying to find out the general shape that looks best on you.
Step 2: Go online and find a dress in the style that suits you, but in a price range you can afford. The trick here is that bridal shops mostly carry the top of the line dresses, and a few bargain dresses. There’s a vast field of mid-range fabulousness that they don’t have room to stock all the time. You can find those dresses on the interwebs.
Step 3: Print off the online listing with the model number, brand and price.
Step 4: Locate a bridal shop that carries that brand of dresses.
Step 5: Take your printout to that bridal shop and have them order the dress. If they carry the brand, they can do it, even if they don’t usually stock it. Try to talk them into the same price as the web, or at least the web price plus the cost of shipping.

Ordering it through a local bridal shop instead of ordering online gives you better coverage for alterations and returns. As a customer of the bridal shop, I was front of the line for alterations, even though I didn’t pay a lot for the dress.

My wedding dress cost under $300, and it looked as good as any I’ve seen for 5 times that price. You’re only going to wear it once. You don’t have to mortgage your house to look good.

That’s my wedding bargain tip for the day.

Alana

Repost: On gay marriage

In light of all the hoopla about Prop 8 in California and the gay marriage laws in Iowa and other states, it’s about time to re-post what I wrote a few months back, when gay marriage was first approved in California.

I’m a Christian. I believe in the Bible. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for our sins. Do I believe that homosexuality is wrong? Who cares? Some of the nicest, coolest people I’ve known in this world are gay. And I believe that God loves them as much as He loves me. The Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself, and a lot of my neighbors are gay. So I love them as much as I love any of my straight friends.

A lot of my Christian friends and family strongly believe that gays are part of some grand conspiracy to undermine Christianity. I’ve known too many gay people to believe that. My friends are not part of a political agenda. They are real people with problems and pain and joy and happiness like anyone else.

But that’s not the main reason that I’m happy about the legalization of gay marriage. The main reason is that I’m a strong supporter of the US Constitution. The first line of the first amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Why do people want gay marriage to be illegal? Because “traditionally” marriage is a man and a woman. Where did this tradition come from? Judaism, Christianity, and later adopted into Islam. Western society has believed that homosexuality is wrong for as long as it has been dominated by Christianity.

American society is no longer just Christian European white people. As the world becomes smaller and cultures interact, we must accept that religion-tied traditions are not the necessarily the norm of everyone in America. Imagine that you are a devout Buddhist from a hypothetical Pacific island. In Buddhist teachings, being faithful to your partner (regardless of sex) is a virtue, and you hope to follow the established rituals of your new country and get married. But you find out that because you want to marry someone of the same sex, this is illegal. If you asked around to find out why, it would always be because of Christianity. But didn’t the constitution say that there is no state religion in America? Why is this hypothetical Buddhist being forced to remain single?

By prohibiting gay marriage at the governmental level, we are forcing a single religious belief on all people, regardless of their personal religious beliefs. And that is not a very American thing to do.

Back in the 1500’s the Bible was first being printed in “normal” languages instead of just in Latin. Normal Christians could start to read it and determine for themselves what was right. A group of them decided that it was more Biblical to baptise adults rather than infants. So they baptised each other as adults, and the Catholic church hunted them down and killed them because Catholicism was the official state religion, and they broke the religious rules. Christians today do the same thing when they try to mandate Christian moral law into American statutory law.

If a church or a minister wants to refuse to marry gays, I don’t have a problem with that at all. Churches are there to interpret scripture. That is not the purpose of the US government.

My own pastor wouldn’t perform my wedding because I was marrying a non-Christian. I don’t have a problem with that pastor’s decision. He was only following his personal moral beliefs, and I hold no grudge against him for it. But if the state of Minnesota had refused me a marriage license because I was marrying a non-Christian, I would have been just as hurt and annoyed as my gay friends who are just trying to live their lives like everyone else.

Alana

Fudge’s Adventure

I mentioned before that we were going to get Fudge neutered and get him a cagemate. But in the end we decided that was too risky. He doesn’t get along with other piggies, and there’s a good chance he’d end up fighting whoever we put in with him. So we’d end up with 3 guinea pig cages instead of 2, when we’re really hoping to eventually cut back to one.

But the problem remained that Fudge was lonely and depressed. The old arrangement was Fudge on the floor under the table that held Spike and Elvis’ cage. We rearranged things. We put Elvis and Spike’s cage on the floor right next to Fudge and took the table out. Now Fudge can see Elvis and Spike and talk to them, so he isn’t lonely. At the same time, he can’t hump anyone, so Elvis and Spike are happy. It even seems likt Elvis is more relaxed now because he can see where his old roommate is. It’s all good.

We still had a vet appointment booked for Fudgie, and decided to go ahead and bring him in, just for a checkup. The veterinary hospital is just down the road from my office, so my husband took the day off work and then stopped in at my office to say “hi” on the way to the vet. My co-workers got to meet my husband and my piggy (with the universal reaction of, “That guinea pig is enormous!”) and Fudge got to spend some time outside and poop all over the smoking area outside the office.

The vet said that Fudgie is very healthy, and not really overweight, even though he is big. She also said that his “special” personality is most likely because he was the runt of his litter.

Here is some video I shot of Fudgie and Elvis in the new cage setup.

Alana

Cowboy fun!

I’m a huge fan of the comedy of Rob Paravonian, and his newest video is completely awesome.

Early Happy Mother’s Day! (Or late, if you’re British)

I would wait to post this on Sunday, but it’s just too cute to hold back. These aren’t my piggies. I just happened to find them on YouTube, and I think it’s one of the most hilariously adorable things I’ve seen in a long time. And it is perfect for Mother’s Day.

Alana