Well, hot dang!

My hometown is getting an Olive Garden! WE HAVE ARRIVED!

Speaking of country things, I am sitting here acting as a human pillow for Ben while he snores and I watch 19 Kids and Counting. I enjoy TLC and two out of three dentists (at least dental students who write this blog) agree that it's fun to watch the Duggar family.

I was reading an article in my beloved Vanity Fair, while in the wilderness, about this Creation Museum out in Kentucky. While I generally believe in science, I don't think these issues are all black and white and there is NO reason for the author of this VF article to be so snobby and judgmental. The author basically made fun of all the museum's guests and took some low-blows about how fat the patrons were. Just because you are wildly fabulous and have an incredible vocabulary doesn't mean you get to be mean, but I guess that's the point of magazine journalism?

Back when the show was still called 17 Kids and Counting, the Duggar Family, dressed in home-made colonial era wear, visited the Creation Museum. As I'm watching this episode now, a couple years and two more births later, I realize the editing of this show is a little different. Back in the beginning, I kind of felt bad for the Duggar children who were harassed with leading questions from producers, designed to make them seem brain-washed and backward. Now, it seems like even the camera guys have bonded so much with the family, their "crazy" ways are endearing.

The point is, even if someone's lifestyle is very different from yours or what you perceive as "normal," it's a fun challenge to step into their shoes and at least see where they are coming from. They may still be crazy, but being open-minded and truly tolerant is to be able to understand intolerance without encouraging it.

Am I still going to tell my friends Michelle should think about retiring from the baby factory? Yes. Am I still more Dixie Chicks than Toby Keith? Definitely. But, after all, I am a girl from a town that is just now getting an Olive Garden. So, even though I despised growing up feeling singled out as the only donkey in a herd of elephants, I think it was a good learning experience in appreciating others and not taking my own beliefs for granted.