Today was the second day of our weekend.  I can hardly wait for it to be over so we can get back to work.  How many times in my life has anyone heard me say that?  😉

This morning we finally got to check out the quilt shop in Gore.  The moment we opened the door we were greeted by a dog that was smaller than either of our cats.  She was so excited to see us she was running circles around us.  The shop owner, Sue, was also happy to see us!  She said she just acquired the shop in February and she’s still working to get it set up, but it was a nice place.  She said she’s thinking of offering classes and I told her if they are on Wednesdays I could come.  I asked her if there are any quilt groups in the area, and she told me about one that’s meeting tomorrow night.  They don’t actually do quilting at their meetings most of the time, which is a disappointment, but they discuss shows that are going on locally.  I might give it a try.

This afternoon Mark had a new patient orientation at the VA in Muskogee and this time I went with him.  It’s 25 miles from Gore to Muskogee on Hwy 10.  We didn’t take the turnpike because they charge a toll.  The route we took was through woodsy hills and farms.  I saw little blobs of green in some of the bare trees and realized that was probably mistletoe.  It made me want to jump out of the car and stand under one of those trees to be kissed by Mark!

Muskogee is a much larger town.  The VA hospital sits up on a hill overlooking the town.  Our visit to the VA was fairly unremarkable, but afterwards we did a little exploration of some of the big stores in Muskogee.  We went into Hobby Lobby and looked through the craft section for ideas for the activity center.  Then we went to Hancock Fabrics, but that was really a disappointment.  Maybe one third of the store was fabrics.  The Hancock Fabrics store in California was full of fabrics.  Oh well… We went on to a store that sells DVDs and looked in the children’s section for G rated movies.  I was amazed at how many perfectly innocent movies are rated PG.  The Cat in the Hat?!  Anne of Green Gables?!  The movie raters are taking things a bit far if you ask me!

After an afternoon in Muskogee, Mark and I came home and had a quick dinner, then went to the First Assembly of God church for their Wednesday night service.  Things started off fine.  The music was old-timey gospel music.  They had a couple electric guitars and a piano and they were all good musicians.  There were maybe 40 people there, so when the pastor got up to speak, he looked at Mark and me and asked who we were.  Then he directed everyone to greet each other and at least half the church came to greet us.

The real problem came when the pastor started preaching.  He’s one of those preachers that talks about how we’re looking forward to Christ’s return, but woe to those sinners who will be standing before the judgement seat.  He got worked up and he was saying, “I look forward to going to a place where there’s no disappointment-hah! There’s no discouragement-hah!”  He was yelling at us with a big grin on his face.  Then he started making veiled remarks that I took to be about gays going to hell and that’s when I began tuning out.  If my only two choices were that and the sermon I heard at Dad’s church about loving gays and accepting them into church membership if they promise to remain celebate, I’d take Dad’s church.  As it is, I leave all judgement to God.  I accept people however they come to me.  I suppose I’d have to say that I do judge judgemental people though.  I may need to work on my attitude here in the Bible belt.