The US Budget Deficit

I thought I would blog on this, since it's been on my mind a lot lately. I made a Facebook status that made my family laugh, but I one that I actually believe, and it read "I think two of my aunts working together could fix this country's unbalanced budget."

My dad's two sisters are great at financial planning and never have problems with making numbers crunch the way they want them to. They always know how much they can spend on lunch or movies or a shopping trip, and rarely do they allow themselves to overspend (unless those sales are amazing).

It makes me wonder how the people elected for these positions, elected for their "skills" (I use quotes because I honestly wonder if they have any skills at all), can sit back and have so many meetings about the problems in this country (including people living on park benches, in tents in the middle of a Michigan winter, and unable to feed their children), and yet still not reach any semblance of a conclusion or solution.

I honestly don't know how it is so very hard to shuffle money around and fix the deficit, even if it means cutting funds to some organizations. Yes, those organizations will have to also make changes, but everyone had to make changes when the economy crashed.

Does anyone have any sort of opinionated explanation for me?

For Her

I've been thinking lately, that maybe you don't understand my side. Maybe you don't think about anyone but yourself and where you are in life, what you need in the present.

There will come a day when you realize you've alienated those who would have been there for you through it all. You've burned the bridges connecting you to your family, only calling when you need something. You called your dad for money for your apartment, even though you complain that you have no time to do anything else because you're working three jobs and taking a few summer classes. Even though I've tried multiple times to contact you, and in multiple different ways, I always get excuses like "I'm really busy right now" or "Hey, I'm out with my sorority sisters, so I'll call you back tomorrow."

But do you? It's been at least two months since I tried to talk to you the last time, and you still haven't bothered to try to return my messages. You're so caught up in your own life, in your own problems, that you never look back to see how your family is. Sure, you saw your siblings and parents the other day. For how long?

When's the last time you talked to your father's mother? Did you bother to ask how she'd healed and how she was doing after her ankle surgery, when it'd been broken in three places? Did you send a card, which would have costs whatever a stamp costs these days if you'd have wrote a letter on a piece of paper and made your own little envelope? What about the rest of the family, who is caught in the middle of a feud between two of the individual families? Or the cousin who owns the property we camp on, which you're so eager to get to for a vacation? He hit a deer on his motorcycle a few days ago, skinned up his back bad enough so that one of his tattoos is destroyed; the bike doesn't sound like its salvageable, though the engine might be; he has three cracked ribs, is in constant pain trying to breathe, yet he wants to go back to work less than a week after the accident.

On top of all the others, there's me. The one you vowed to never lose contact with, vowed that we'd always be close as sisters. Just yesterday, "me" found out that in order to fix the pain in my knees that has me taking Vicodin daily to make it through, I have to have surgery. So the next year to two years of my life are going to be very trying and painful.

But obviously you don't care enough to make time to learn these things, or keep connections open with your family. I hope you don't expect us to make a huge deal over you when you do finally come back. I can guarantee I am not the only one who feels this way.

Skinny and Healthy

I don't mean to be yet another voice to complain about the female celebrities and their body shapes, but I do want to lend my voice to the distinction between skinny/fat/curvy and HEALTHY.

I have no problem admitting that I'd like to lose weight (and am working on it) and be a smaller size. I have no problem saying that to anyone who bothered to ask. But I defend my choice to lose weight as becoming HEALTHY, not skinny. I was overweight in high school, and thanks to the prescription steroids used to treat my allergy break outs after graduation, I gained even more. I look around at the magazines and the department stores, with their cute jeans, shirts, and bikinis and wonder. I wonder about my life and the choices and circumstances I'm faced with. All those little things that have put me where I am today.

Mostly I wonder about those company CEO's and presidents, wonder about their choices to promote tiny, stick-figure, scantily girls as being healthy and the "ideal" model. I wonder who, in the long line of people to blame, really has the influence to stop the madness of this generation.

How is Mischa Barton healthy? Thanks to being called overweight at her size 6 during her time in the O.C., she dropped to a size 0 in 6 months! Losing that much weight leaves her body at risk of illness and infection due to malnutrition. Giving into peer pressure and criticism, and dieting unhealthily and unnecessarily. Is she a good role model for our children? Our kids have enough on their plate to deal with every day without having the media agree that they should be skinnier and look like their tiny classmates.




I just read an article about unhealthy celebrities and famous faces, with a small section about models. The article (found HERE) says that models are required to be so very skinny to focus viewers on the clothes they wear (if you ask me, it should be the lack of clothing they wear) instead of any curves they may have.

Is this model what our young girls should aspire to look and dress like? Should our girls look so frail and breakable while covering so little skin and flaunting their bodies? This model is no role model either! There is no possible way she is healthy at this size, and she is certainly not dressed in appropriate clothing to be in front of so many people.













Celebrity role models should not concentrate on what critics say about their bodies or their weight. They should focus on being healthy and a good model for young girls and boys to look up to. As Demi Lovato says in THIS article about when her breakdown occurred: “It was the time in the tabloids when very, very skinny girls were on the cover of every magazine and that’s what I was looking up to. That’s what I had to idolize.  I don't want that for young girls to idolize.”

This is a happy, healthy role model for our children to look up to. Demi Lovato is very open about her breakdown and health problems, as well as the reason she developed them. She is constantly working to overcome her health problems and continue to be healthy. Yes, she fell down and gave into the pressures to be skinny and "hip". But she's since then stood up stronger than ever, ready to promote health and happiness to the next generation.