Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sigh...

I guess the thing about blogging is that if you want to be successful, you actually have to carve out a little bit of time each day to write.

As you can see, I haven't been as faithful to this thing as I originally intended.

But I'm back!

Much has happened this (lack there of) fall. Life and it's changes are happening at a pace faster than can keep up with.

In the last two months....

I turned 30, celebrated with my in laws, and had family portraits taken.

Halloween weekend brought us a freak snowstorm that gave us 15 inches of snow in 12 hours and left us without power for 4 days.

I got a semi promotion that I wasn't expecting at all and am thriving in my new role.

Malone has turned from sweet infant/toddler into an opinionated whiny crazy fun toddler (basically everything that is two).

We drove to IL for Thanksgiving and had a lovely time visiting with my family. The best part of the trip was seeing my 2 year old and my 70 year old grandparents enjoy playing on the Ipad together, watching cousins bond, and seeing Malone interact with my grandparents' dog.

It seems like just yesterday I was on the beach savoring one last weekend of summer. And here tomorrow will be December 1, which begins the sprint that is the holidays.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Blog-In For Democracy

I've had a bit of a blog break. Self imposed, weather imposed, life imposed.

Each day I wake up and think THIS IS THE DAY! I will start my blogging again today. And each night comes and I am too tired, too mopey, too everything.

But this is a game changer. And I am happy and proud to participate. I am inspired.

Dear 2012 Presidential Candidates,

We are your future constituents and we are parents.

We are American mothers and fathers and grandparents and guardians. Our families might be the most diverse in the world. Blended and combined in endless permutations, we represent every major religion, political ideology and ethnic culture that exists. We are made from equal parts biology and choice. Our children come to us in every way possible—including fertility miracles, adoption, and remarriage.

Our very modern families embody the freedom that defines America. We embody America. We are rich in diversity, but we are united in our family values. We come together today, with one voice, to express our grave disappointment in the national political discourse.

The 2012 countdown has barely begun and we are already being bombarded with the warmed-over, hypocritical rhetoric of 2008. We are living in a time where 15.1% of Americans now live in poverty, the unemployment rate stands at 16%, and we are spending close to $170 billion annually between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan*.

Given the current state of affairs we would expect every candidate to focus on the issues that truly matter: job creation, debt-relief, taxes, education, poverty, and ending the war(s). Instead, it is already clear to us that the conversation has been hijacked, with the goal of further polarizing our nation into a politically motivated and falsely created class-war.

We will not stand for another campaign year in which politicians presume to know what our family values are as they relate to the nation.

To be clear, here are our family values:

  • Affordable health care, including family planning, for all Americans. We will not tolerate any candidate using the shield of “Choice” to blind us from the issues that really matter. When funding is stripped from organizations like Planned Parenthood, access to sliding-scale health care (including yearly pap smears & mammograms), comprehensive sex education, and family planning is blocked from the poorest of the population.
  • Access to education, and the ability to actually use it. We want quality, affordable, federally-funded pre-K programs made available in every State, in order to provide an even starting point for all children enrolled in public schools— regardless of the wealth of the district or town they live in.
  • A reinstatement of regulations for banks issuing mortgages and full prosecution for those who engaged in fraudulent lending practices. We want full accountability —investigation, indictment and prosecution— of those individuals and institutions who engaged in fraudulent lending practices and who helped create the massive foreclosures that left many families homeless or struggling to keep their homes.
  • A return of strict environmental regulations protecting water, air, food, and land that were removed in the last two decades. We want our children to grow up in a world not weighed down by the strains of pollution and global warming. Between BPA in our products, sky-rocketing rates of asthma in kids, questionable hormones in our over-processed food, and more, we need leaders who will put our needs and safety over the desires and profits of large corporations.

Family planning, health care, education, economic solvency and environmental safety: these are our national family values.

Candidates who demonstrate the ability to understand the gravity of these issues, and their impact on our families, and who can provide actual, viable solutions to these problems will garner our support and our votes.

We believe in this democratic system of ours, and we will continue to use our voices and our votes to see that it reaches its fullest potential.

Sincerely,
Your future constituents,
The mothers & fathers of America

If you would like to forward this letter to your elected officials, you can find their contact info at the following links: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

* Sources for stats: http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.4452bed82adf3124e5884678e236d7fb.361 http://costofwar.com/en/

To see who is participating in Blog-In 2011, please click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pBuBqfCu9ReVNmMu-F08TX6HXhLps98756FkVNBMAE4/edit