A Day at Our Favorite Campground

My family loves camping and always has. When my sisters and I were growing up, we took a week-long camping trip to our favorite campground every summer without fail, accompanied by my cousins' family. Our two families would get adjoining sites and spend the week doing things together - bike riding around the campground, visiting the beach, spending time at the camp store and the playground, hiking, visiting our favorite local attractions, and just relaxing and playing in our campsites.

Me and my sisters and cousins, in our early camping years!

Things have changed since those days, and we no longer go camping with my cousins. Instead of a tent, we use a pop-up camper, and this year we haven't planned any trips at all - we adopted ferrets earlier this year and found that while they're tons of fun, they also require lots of care and upkeep. As of yet, we haven't found anyone to take care of them while we're away, so that means at the moment there won't be any lengthy, week-long vacations or road trips...but that doesn't rule out day trips!

Because These Things Will Change

I'm just going to jump into this post without preamble today, because any gradual beginning would just be repeating what I've said in the past. At this point, we all know that I support gay rights. (And if you don't? Well, you must have missed my extremely controversial post about it, then.)

I'm quite confident that eventually, gay marriage will be legal everywhere. There is a lot of opposition and prejudice, but the support of LGBT rights grows each day. People are becoming more aware of the discrimination LGBT couples face, and as awareness grows so does acceptance. And that's how change begins.

But for now, it seems like things are just starting to gather some speed - gradually. Of the fifty states in America, only six of them - Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia - legally recognize gay marriage. That number was scheduled to go up to seven; however, according to Wikipedia, "Washington [state] was scheduled to begin granting same-sex marriages on June 7, 2012, but the issue has been forced to a November 2012 voter referendum."

Change is coming. But we need to help it along.

Stepping Back Into Things

I began publicly blogging about a year and a half ago, give or take a bit, and in all that time I've posted pretty consistently. True, the meaning of consistent changed - sometimes I'd post daily, sometimes once a week - but as far as bloggers go, I've kept a pretty steady schedule since the very start. That is, up until now - because as you may have noticed, my last post was over two weeks ago! I haven't taken a two-week blogging hiatus since we went camping last summer...which makes this my first official blogging break.

I decided to step away for a few reasons, but the biggest one was Candida-related. As I explained in this post, I'm on a Candida diet, and as my Candida overgrowth dies off I've been experiencing symptoms of it. Most of these symptoms are physical - coughing, fatigue, splotchy skin, sore joints, all of which have come and then moved right along - but some symptoms are mental, too, like the anxiety flares I've had lately.