I just have to say thank you to all of the well wishes I’ve received from you guys.  They’ve definitely helped lift my spirits.  I’m still feeling a bit nauseous all of the time, but I’ve noticed that it seems to get worse the hungrier I get.

I talked to my doctor’s nurse earlier in the week, who relayed my message to him, and he wants me to try to hang on for a bit longer and see if it goes away before he tries me on something else.  He actually put me on two different medications for two different issues, so starting two new drugs within a week of each other may have compounded the nausea problem.

I’ll be hitting the grocery store tomorrow, as usual.  Do you all have any suggestions for what I should get?  Is there anything in particular that you like to eat or that you’ve found helpful when you’ve been nauseous in the past?  I’m open to all ideas at this point!

Kimberly, I had to laugh when I read your comment, because I was actually nibbling on saltines as I was reading it.  It’s a great tip and I plan on getting another box at the store tomorrow.  Thanks!

I may try to go for a hike tomorrow and see if the exercise helps.  Considering the fact that I now get motion sick just walking across the room, we’ll see how it goes.

If I ever say that I want to get pregnant (I’m most definitely not), I hope one of you guys will remind me of this week and then smack me upside the head.

I wrote a few days ago about how my doctor recently prescribed a new medication for me.  I started taking it very early Sunday morning and ever since I’ve felt like about 13 shades of hell.  13 was a random number picked for the sole reason that it is a historically unlucky number and I know I’ve been feeling like a lot of shades of hell.  Everything I’ve read about this medication has told me that this feeling will go away, but that it could take up to three months for that to happen.  Ack! I don’t know if I’m going to make it through one month let alone three.

The main symptom, other than feeling even more tired than usual (apparently that is possible), is nausea.  We’re talking the kind of nausea that I haven’t felt since my last college drunkfest many, many years ago.  And unfortunately, this nausea tends to last almost all day every day.  My doctor’s nurse recommended that I try Emetrol, but I don’t know how impressed I am with it.

I also mentioned that because of this, I haven’t been tracking my points.  And while that might sound like I’ve let it become a free-for-all, I really haven’t.  I might not be eating what is best for me at all times, but I haven’t been binging (which is definitely saying something).  I’ve been eating when I get hungry and have been eating what sounds good to me.  This may be anything from a subway sandwich to a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s.  Whatever it may be, it has to be something that doesn’t make me want to hurl just by thinking about it.

After the concert Tuesday night, I made a decision to do something that I hadn’t done in well over two and a half years.  I stopped by McDonald’s on my way home.  I was actually starving (it had been over eight hours since I’d ate last), but was also exhausted (had just been standing for well over two hours) and had been fighting that darn nausea all day.  The thought of having to fix something to eat when I got home made me want to cry.  A double cheeseburger and fries sounded good and didn’t make me want to hurl, so that’s what I got.  Keep in mind that every time I’ve gone to McDonald’s over the last two years, the only things I’ve gotten are chicken nuggets or grilled chicken salad. 

The funniest thing about my little splurge is that the next day (Wednesday) has been the only day that I haven’t fought that nausea.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

Don’t worry.  I haven’t given up.  I do want to get back to my healthier eating and do want to lose a few more pounds.  While I’ve become increasingly satisfied with my current weight range, I do plan to get back on plan once I get a handle on this medication.

“Ooohh Baby.”

Words honestly cannot express how FREAKING AWESOME the New Kids on the Block concert was Tuesday night.  I’m still on a permanent high, I think.  One that even coming to work hasn’t extinguished.  I can honestly say that I think it was the best concert I’ve been to.  The Matchbox Twenty/Alanis concert was good, but the only one that comes close was when I saw Little Texas, Tim McGraw, and BlackHawk in the 10th grade and the only reason that one comes close is because I adored BlackHawk and had front row center seats.

This concert was a little girl’s dream come true.  That little girl being my former 6th grade self, of course.  Okay, it was a grown girl’s dream come true, too.  I had an absolute blast!

My best friend ended up not being able to go.  :(  Not only was that bad news, but she informed me in the same e-mail that she is having to move from a city that is only an hour and a half away to one that is about seven hours away.  I hardly get to see her now, so I’m really sad about that.  Her husband is being transferred, though, so it’s not like they have a choice.

So I ended up taking my mom.  She even had fun!  We went down early and found a parking space.  We discovered that if you get to the parking garage a little before 4:30 and pull a ticket, the garage attendants for the event parking haven’t shown up yet and you end up not having to pay the $10 for parking.  Otherwise, you pay the $10 in advance and then the gates are wide open when you leave.  That was a nice perk and one that I’ll have to remember if I go to concerts at the Sprint Center in the future.

My mom and I then went to dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill.  It was a very nice restaurant, but one in which you could feel comfortable wearing jeans.  In addition to the amazing selection of hamburgers and chicken sandwiches (among their other entrees), they also serve bison.  Our waiter asked if we had ever had it before and since I couldn’t remember, he actually brought us out a sample to try.  The sample of the Bison came with a sample of their mashed potatoes.  The bison was served roasted and it tasted good, but was a bit chewy for me.  I did, however, get the Bison Meatloaf on their menu and HIGHLY recommend it.  I thought it was extremely flavorful and am craving more even now!  It came with delicious mashed potatoes and a yummy squash casserole.  Overall, I give it two big thumbs up.  And to top it off, while it was all extremely delicious, I amazingly didn’t even clean my plate!  That’s a NSV for me.  Another bonus was catching the hostess singing “step by step” and dancing.  She laughed when she caught me watching her.  I guess everyone had caught the New Kids fever that night.

By the time we were ready to leave the restaurant, it was about 5:40 and since people were already starting to line up when we got there at 4:30, we decided to go ahead and get in line at the doors to the Sprint Center.  There are a bunch of doors, but for some reason, everyone was lining up behind about four of them.  We stood there for a minute, and since my mom’s back was bothering her a bit, we said, “this is stupid,” and went to stand next to one of the other doors and started our own line.  So, we were first through security at that door.  It was fun watching people, though.  A lot of them had signs and crazy shirts on.  While the crowd was heavily weighted towards women, I was actually surprised by the number of men there.  As Donnie said at one point in the concert, they were the smart men by taking their ladies.  They’d be the beneficiaries of all of their pent up excitement later on. 

I was extremely surprised by how incredible our seats were.  We were on the side in the middle section of the arena, but since our seats were 16 and 17, I figured we would be at the end furthest from the stage.  Not so!  We were on the end closest to the stage.  I knew several people that were at the concert (and have learned since that even more were there that I didn’t know about beforehand), but had no idea where they were sitting, so wasn’t able to meet up with them.  I found out today that my friend Christina and her daughter had 5th row seats on the floor and had Donnie smack her hand as he walked by.

The first opening act was Lady Gaga.  The only reason I had any idea who she was was because one of the songs on the new NKOTB album featured her.  Neither my mom nor I were impressed.  She has a good voice, but her music really isn’t to my taste.  Although, I’m sure the guys in the audience enjoyed watching her move across the stage in her underwear:

Next up was Natasha Bedingfield.  She was amazing!  It hardly seemed like she was on stage before she was done, though.  Her voice is absolutely incredible, and she really got the crowd pumped up for the New Kids.  An added note:  If this concert comes to your town and you happen to get tickets, she makes herself available to sign CDs between her show and the New Kids’ show.  We didn’t go, because we didn’t want to fight the crowds.  My mom thought she was better than Lady Gaga, but still wasn’t all that impressed.  As I said, I love her voice and her music (I have two of her albums), but her backup music was so loud that it was hard to actually hear her sometimes.

Then came the best part! The New Kids!  They opened with their song “Single,” which, of course, got the ladies in the crowd going.  From then on, it was pretty much a blur.  The whole night seems like a dream to me.  Did I say it was FREAKING AWESOME?!?  As Christina said, I feel like I’m 12 years old all over again.  There wasn’t a moment of the concert that I didn’t enjoy and I think my ears are still ringing - both from the loud music and from people screaming.

One devastating moment occurred right before the doors were opened to the arena.  A piece of advice:  if you ever buy a card for expanded memory for your camera, make sure it’s compatible with your camera before you get to your important event.  I had a 512 MB card in my camera, but wanted a bit of extra space, so bought a 4 GB card to take.  When I took the 512 MB card out of my camera before we left, I even thought of sticking it in my purse just in case, but didn’t for some reason.  I’m such an idiot.  Anyway, before we went in, I turned on my camera to set the date and it asked me to format the card.  No problem, right?  I clicked continue and it tried to format it, but couldn’t do it.  It just kept going back to the same screen.  ARGH! I about freaked.  So, all night, I was restricted to the memory within my camera alone.  I actually had to keep deleting some not-so-good pictures to take more.  If my 4 GB card had worked, I would have recorded practically the whole damn concert!  As it is, I only had room at the end of the concert to record about 4 seconds of one of their encores, “Hangin’ Tough.”

Our tickets actually said “No Cameras,” and the Sprint Center website for weeks in advance said “no cameras.”  An e-mail that I got the day before the concert, however, had revised it to “no professional cameras.”  So I decided to risk taking my digital camera.  I’m glad I did!  Security searched our purses, but didn’t say anything about it.  Based on the number of people taking pictures before the doors opened, they would have had to turn away an awful lot of people anyway.

The crowd was great and everyone was on their feet for the entire two hours they performed.  To see a bunch of the pictures I took, click here or go to the Photos link on the toolbar above.

This is one of my favorite pictures:

Today, I tend to lean more towards Joe, but when I was in 6th grade, I was a HUGE Jordan fan, so this was a particular favorite moment of mine:

The concert actually brought back the memory that I used to not be able to go to sleep unless I was listening to music.  It was the only way to get my brain to shut down even at such a young age.  (Hmm, maybe I need to try that again now so I can get some more sleep?)  But listening to their cassette tapes is what got me started on that.  I used to listen to them as I was falling asleep and pretend that they were singing to me.  Yeah, me and about every other girl of the same age at the time.  Silly girl. 

Skye, as I told you last night, I thought of you often (especially when Donnie was asking the crowd how his butt looked and was shaking it for the close up camera), and I kept trying to get a good picture of him, but his hat almost always left him in shadow!

I had seen in some YouTube clips that they had done a portion of their concerts on a smaller, rotating stage towards the back of the arena and had wondered if they would do the same at this concert.  They did!

One of my favorite parts was hearing Joe singing “Stay the Same.” I love that song, and he had a backup choir with him.

I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it, but Danny even did some breakdancing.

Overall, as you can probably tell, I was extremely sorry to see the night end.  Those two hours FLEW by, and as one other sad girl sad when it was over, “they had so many more songs they could have sang”!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention (you know, since this IS a blog about my weight loss journey) that one more cool thing about the weight I’ve lost is that I don’t have to worry anymore about spilling over into the seats next to me!  I still find myself worrying about it though until I actually get in my seat.

“Up, up she goes.”  I have that song that Kate Winslet sings at the end of Titanic stuck in my head.  That Josephine flying machine song.  Maybe that’s because I gained 2.4 pounds this week.  I’ve been extremely nauseous the past few days, so I’ve been eating what I think I can keep down and when I feel I need to eat.  I figure that was more important than trying to stick to a certain amount of points.  I have a feeling this is going to be the norm until I get used to this new medicine.

On a happier note, my Natasha Bedingfield/New Kids on the Block concert is tonight and I’m so excited!  WHOOHOO!  Expect a full report (hopefully containing pictures) tomorrow.

Since I’d rather not get into all the crap that I ate this weekend (we’re talking all-time low for me), I’m going to tell you about the movies I saw this week - as I shudder in thought of my weigh in tomorrow.

First, I finally got around to watching the Spiderwick Chronicles.  I adored this movie!  I haven’t read any of the children’s books that it is based on, but might have to pick the first one up (at the library, of course, Shawna!).

I also watched A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie and if you hate to cry in front of people, I suggest you watch it alone.  I loved it, but it about broke my heart.  It’s the story of Mariane Pearl’s struggle to find her husband, journalist Danny Pearl, in Pakistan.

One of my co-workers gave me a huge stack of horror movies to watch.  I’ve only watched the first so far and also loved it.  It was 30 Days of Night and is now one of my favorite horror movies of all time.  It was great!  Josh Hartnett really is a good actor.

We then rented Get Smart and while I had heard terrible reviews for it, I LOVED IT.  I seriously cracked up over and over again.  Sometimes I think Steve Carell goes a little overboard, but I really liked him in this movie.  There’s a scene with his boss and a swordfish that I found particularly funny for some reason.

We also rented The Visitor with Richard Jenkins.  We watched it today and all I can say is that I never wanted it to end.  I was literally sad to see the ending credits. I wanted more.  I highly recommend watching it if you haven’t.

Finally, tomorrow is my dad’s birthday and instead of wanting to go out to eat, he wanted to go to the movies this morning.  Guess what he wanted to see?  W.  We’re both die-hard democrats (as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now), but we all thought that the movie was really slow and were thankful when it was over.  My mom was more disgusted with Bush than ever, my dad had no change of opinion (didn’t see anything he didn’t already know) and I thought that the movie was very sympathetic to Bush.  It seemed to show him as a person who was only trying to make his dad proud and who was a little overzealous.  It also made it seem like all of his underlings (Rumsfeld, etc.) set him up to fail.  I guess it is worth a watch, but I thought it was rather boring (and I love politics).  The most interesting part for me was in seeing the relationship dynamics between him and his parents.

Okay, that’s it for Pamela’s week in review.  Overall, I’d say it was a success (movie-wise anyway) - only one dud in the bunch.  Hope you all did better OP this weekend than I did!

Have you seen any of these movies?  If so, what did you think?

First, thank you to all who left such kind comments on my post from yesterday.  I am glad to have met such wonderful people to share my journey with who understand what it’s like.  You all are an inspiration to me.  Thank you for reading my wild and crazy ramblings.     I will admit I am definitely not the perfect daughter and living with my parents does tend to drive me insane from time to time, but I do the best I can.  My doctor mentioned that I may have a bit of a higher level of anxiety than most people.  Hmmm.  Imagine that. 

Fall is definitely here in Kansas City today.  I have a feeling winter will be following close behind.  It was in the 50s when I stepped outside to come to work today, but there was a tremendously strong wind that was pretty darn chilly.  It really felt like fall with the leaves blowing wildly around me.

I actually had to pull my car over on my way in to work and drag out a branch that had gotten stuck underneath my car.  Thank God that’s all that it was.  I, of course, was having images of something hanging off of my car.  If you haven’t figured out by now, I tend to imagine the worst possible outcome first.  I guess that could sometimes be a benefit, because I usually end up feeling relieved whatever the outcome.

I’m still wondering how in the world I’m going to make it through winter when I was freezing today!  In fact, I’m actually shivering as I sit here writing this.

To top it off, when I turned my car on today, out came Christmas music!  They never tell you for sure when it’s going to happen, but both local stations began airing their Christmas music today.  I knew it was coming, but it’s so hard to believe that it’s right around the corner!  I guess I better start thinking about what I’m going to do for presents!  Ack!

My WW plan has fallen by the wayside this week.  I haven’t really been tracking, but I’m sure I’m in the negative as far as my flex points.  All I can do is try my best for the rest of the week and hope.

Did I mention that it’s only SIX DAYS UNTIL MY NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK CONCERT?!?!?  WHOOHOO!

It’s no wonder that I weighed 300+ pounds before I started this journey.  It’s a total wonder that I didn’t weigh more.

While I’ve always acknowledged that food and eating has (and will always be) a compulsion for me, I never really believed that it was an emotional thing for me.  I never remembered noticing that I would eat more when I was sad, unhappy, excited, or any of a variety of other emotions like some people can.  Although, I did always admire those people who lost their appetites when they got upset. 

I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to situations in which I start to feel that compulsion to eat.  Okay, that’s a lie, I really haven’t.  Not until today, anyway.  From now on, I’m going to try and pay attention to those compulsions to see if I can find any sort of pattern.  Today, I did discover one connection.

I’m going to come right out and say it.  I live with my parents.  Now, before you can call me a loser (oh, too late?), there are a few things you should know.  I work full-time and pay my own way.  I pay all of my own bills, buy my own groceries, and help out around the house.  While rent prices are extremely expensive in my neck of the woods, the main reason why I am currently still living there is because of my parents’ health.

When I moved back to the state a couple of years after college, I moved in with them, hoping to escape the sucky job that I had left and also hoping to save a bit of money for graduate school.  Then my brother died and being there to support my parents was more important than ever.  Then my parents’ health took a turn for the worse.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a ranting blog post about the state of health care in the United States - needless to say I am thoroughly disgusted with it.  I never posted it though, because I felt it may have been too ranting and because I wasn’t quite satisfied with it.  Perhaps one day.

My dad has suffered from extremely severe epilepsy since he was a preteen.  Some of my earliest memories regarding his epilepsy are in holding him up so that he wouldn’t fall, and when when he fell and hit his head on our hardwood kitchen chair.  I still remember the puddle of blood and having to dial 911.

Then the summer after my brother died, he had a seizure and fell down our stairs and shattered his kneecap.  He had to have it totally removed and currently does not have one at all.  Who knew you could walk without one?  I didn’t.  Then various other events occurred leading up to my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer.  Not only was I glad to be here to help keep an eye on my dad, but also to help her through that difficult time.

My dad’s epilepsy over the last year seems to have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.  He seems to be falling quite often lately, much more than he used to.  For many years, he’s taken more than 12 pills a day, and still has multiple seizures almost every day.  That leads doctors to label it “uncontrollable.”  His doctors have pretty much given up on finding anything to cure him.  In fact, he ended up in intensive care twice when I was in college.  Luckily, that hasn’t happened since, and we will never give up hope.  We love him.

Now, you all know I work evenings and it has worked out well.  Since I’m there (usually sleeping) during the day, I can usually hear if he needs help or falls.  Then my mom gets home, we overlap our schedules a bit, and I head to work.

So, that brings me to today.  It was about 8:00 a.m. and I woke up to a loud thud.  My first thought was “Oh God.”  I threw on my robe and ran out to our hallway and his bedroom door was shut.  So, I gradually opened it and sure enough.  He was trying to get up off of the floor.  God only knows what all he bumped into.  That man has more bruises than…I don’t know what.  Someone playing bumper cars without their car?  Yeah, I was grasping there.    He seemed to be okay though.  I watched him get up and orient himself and then get back in bed.  I checked back a few minutes later and he was still in bed, so I figured it was okay to go back to sleep.

Yeah right.  I called a spoke to my mom - she asked that I always let her know if he falls - and then tried to fall asleep.  I tossed and turned, turned and tossed.  I couldn’t get my nerves to settle down, so I finally turned on my bedside light and decided to try reading for a while.  Hopefully the distraction would calm me down and make me sleepy.  I usually hold my book with one hand when I’m reading.  That’s when my brain noticed that my other hand was empty and decided that that needed to be remedied right then.  And my thoughts immediately went to the No Pudge brownies I made last night.  (By the way, if you haven’t tried them and like your brownies extra fudgy, you must try them!)  I had to have one!  Of course, I didn’t leave it at one, but had two instead.  So, I laid in bed reading and stuffing my face with brownies.  Fat-free brownies, but brownies nonetheless.  At least I stopped at two, right?

While I was reading and eating, I heard my dad go downstairs and since he seemed to get down there okay, I figured he must be doing better.  It was right about the time that I was finishing my second brownie (about a half hour later), that I heard it again.  THUD.  Again, on with the robe and out of my room I flew.

My dad was sitting in the middle of our living room floor, the day’s newspaper strewn around him.  He had fallen into our footstool, knocked everything off that I had sitting on it, hit his TV tray (that he keeps his laptop on), and God only knows what else.  The worst part for him wasn’t just the bruises, but the fact that he didn’t stop having seizures there.  He continued having them for the next several hours.  I got him up into his chair and settled back.  I also ran and got him an ice pack for the back of his neck.  It’s a wonder to me that he doesn’t have frostbite.  His seizures seem to get worse when he gets overheated, so we’ve found that putting an ice pack on the back of his neck helps cool him off and calm him down sometimes.  Not today.

I sat in my mom’s chair and watched him for maybe half an hour or so and saw that he just kept having them and having them, so I called my mom.  There is a drug that his doctor told us to give him (if we can get him to swallow it) if he can’t stop having the seizures.  I called her to find out if I should give him one.  She picked up the phone and when I said he had fallen again, she immediately said, “I’m coming home.”  She also told me to get him to take one of the pills.  I did so and sat back and kept an eye on him.  He kept trying to read the paper, but that obviously wasn’t going so well when he kept having seizure after seizure.  At this point, we always start to wonder if we’re going to have to call 911.

My mom was home within 15 minutes.  We kept an eye on him for a while and I answered all of her questions about what I’d seen and then she told me to go back to bed so I could get some sleep for work.  Yeah, right.  I tossed and turned for at least an hour before I finally fell asleep.  Two hours later, my alarm went off.  Needless to say, Pamela is a bit sleepy tonight.

After I was ready to leave for work, my mom informed me that he had continued to have seizures the entire time I had been asleep.  She finally got him to go to sleep, but she said that he seemed to continue having them in his sleep.  After telling her to call me if she needed me, I headed to work.

And so, here I am writing about my day.  I just got an e-mail from my dad forwarding me links to items discussed on Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow tonight, so he is obviously feeling better.  Thank God.  I worry about him.  Both my mom’s and my first thought was that he had had too much excitement over the election yesterday.  My dad is a huge politics buff.  I mean, he watches congress convene on CNN.

So there you have it.  A day in the life of me.  An unusual day, of course.  Most days are much quieter and I’m able to get a full eight hours of sleep.  But it’s days like this that make me glad I’m a 31-year old woman living with her parents.  Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there?

I obviously love both of my parents.  I’m scared for my dad and worried about my mom (who has her own health problems), but since my brother’s death in 2003 I’ve realized just how important they are to me.  I don’t know what I would do without them.

Like many people keep their hands busy to keep themselves from eating, I apparently sometimes keep my hands busy feeding myself to allow my brain to zone out.

What about you?  Are you ever an emotional eater?

Earlier today, just when I thought it was safe to go back to regularly scheduled weight loss programming, I got the news that Proposition 8 passed in California.  I’ll admit it.  I had hoped that it wouldn’t, but there you are.  As you can imagine, to say that I am saddened by this would be one massive understatement.

I understand that some people think it’s “just plain wrong,” but I never understood how it could be considered a threat to “more traditional marriages.”  How can someone else’s loving relationship have any impact whatsoever on your own?

As other, much smarter, pro-gay marriage people have stated before me:

The greatest threat to the sanctity of marriage is divorce.

I personally believe that being gay is not a choice.  I’ve seen what some of my loved ones have gone through and how they have been treated and as one has said (to paraphrase):

Why would I choose to be treated like this?

I also believe that marriage has two foundations.

• Religion and the church

• Legal union

As far as the United States Government is concerned, marriage is merely a legal union between two people.  They join their lives together legally and financially.  Among other benefits, they have the right to merge their finances, and have their voice heard in the event of a medical emergency.  You agree to take on the responsibility for the other person.

We each place our own personal religious beliefs on our own idea of what marriage is.  Some people are religious and some are not.  Some get married in churches and some get married at City Hall.   Some people believe that marriage is an equal union between two people.  Some people believe that a woman should be subserviant to her husband.

Most arguments against gay marriage are based on such religious beliefs.  However, the United States Constitution is very specific about upholding religious freedom.  Many people with such arguments also argue that the United States is a Christian nation.  While the founders may have been Christian and the majority of those living in the U.S. may be Christian (I don’t know stats for sure), the whole purpose of founding our nation was that our ancestors wanted freedom to practice the religion of their choice.

If you don’t agree with gay marriage, don’t marry someone of the same sex.  But please don’t deny another person the opportunity to love whoever they please, follow their own religious beliefs, and enjoy the same freedoms, rights, and legal benefits that you are so lucky enough to access to.

Besides, based on the majority of the relationships I’ve seen in my lifetime, the gay ones seem to be the healthiest and most functional.

Now that my little emotion-filled rant is over, I can’t promise that I won’t bring up my political beliefs again - this blog is about my life - but I promise the next post will actually be about weight loss.  And, as long as you respect my opinions, then I will respect yours.  Let’s all play nice.

While I was still floating on clouds from Obama’s win and drying my eyes from his acceptance speech, my friend Riley brought me back down to earth with this post that makes my heart ache.  Not only for my friends and family who may be affected by these votes, but also for the state of basic human decency in this country.  I still hold out hope for California.

Now, based on the vote tallies, I’m sure I’ll probably rile some people up with this post, but I hold very strong beliefs where these propositions/amendments are concerned and couldn’t let the opportunity pass without saying something.