Marriage probs...

It seems now a days that traditional is a thing of the past. You’ve probably read in the news and seen on TV, the road that the gay and lesbian communities have been on with respect to equality and the allowance of same sex marriages. This is definitely a long journey come full circle. Prior to this debate, there were others that my family happens to be part of. In fact, two of them; interracial and divorced couples.

As you know from my previous blogs, my father is from Mexico and my mother is from here in the United States. There was a point in time where that situation was looked upon negatively. Mexicans in the United States have had a very difficult time. There were times that they were not allowed to get green cards to be able to stay here legally. There were times that the doors were open so they could enter freely. However because of the economy of Mexico, many of them still game illegally because they couldn’t afford the prices we wanted to charge them to get the legal status. Many of them came here without money and lived on the streets where they saw things that were bad. Many of them became part of those bad things thus perpetuating the bad name that they Mexicans being given.

My mother comes from a very religious family where the “D” word is a big no no…divorce. However, my mother and her first husband could not make a go of it and eventually divorced. That was a very tough time for her because she was sort of ostracized from her family for a short period of time. She was the oldest in the family and so according to her parents was not doing a good job of setting the example. Then, to make matters worse, she met, dated and married a Mexican. WHOA!!!! SHUT THE FRONT DOOT!! Yep, that’s right…a double whammy. Two examples that not only in her family, but in the media were items of debate. Interracial marriages would never work many would say. “Her first marriage didn’t work out so she must have low self esteem and this is the result”.

Those debates are pretty much long gone now. The media has since moved on to bigger and better issues, according to them. But my parents have beaten their statistics. They have now been together for 22 years. There have been ups and downs for them, just like the traditional marriages. But through it all, they have made it work.

I’m sure that the same sex couples are feeling some of the same things my parents felt back then. This issue seems to be a much larger debate, but in the end it will all work out. Just like it did for my parents.(470)

-Ardeeemilla(:

Common Core

Heyyy guys!!

Common core...have you heard of it? Allegedly, some time ago, the government started to track all of us kids in the public school system. The intent was to track children through their school age years and use the data to help parents better understand the needs of their children and to help them be better prepared for college.  But as with many things in the government, things have evolved and have changed from the original intent.   Have you ever thought about all the forms with all the blanks that you have to fill in with your personal information?  Where and who keeps that information.

Now in some bigger cities schools, they even take your photo. Who gets that?   To me it seems a little Big Brotherish. It's been said that because of Common Core, someday the government will be able to track us wherever we are. Some of those sci-fi movies may become reality. Someday, the government will be able to say exactly how many blondes there are in the school system, how many overweight kids there are, if you are from a low income or wealthy family. They may even be able to tell if you are bored in class by how much you fidget in class.   If there is such a thing as too much for our government?  Is there a point when we as people of the US will be able to say enough is enough? President Obama's administration is in favor of Common Core so it won't stop for a few more years.(322)

-Ardeeemilla(:

Media kills romance...

Has social media killed romance?

“And vulnerability is the essence of romance. It's the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, "This is me, and I'm interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not."(Kutcher)

Social media has really gotten in the way of how we build relationships with other people.  Why are we using these websites for dating? I’m not saying that they don’t work or that we shouldn’t use them, I’m saying that I feel if you have a hard time finding someone those sites would be great, but not so you can have an over the computer relationship.  If you are truly looking for a relationship than you shouldn’t be hiding behind that screen embrace the true you and all that the other person can love about you. If you can’t be the real you around them then they don’t deserve you.

In today’s society many of us use texting for everything, even to say I love you. Texting is so impersonal, what happened to two people meeting for the first time exchanging numbers and waiting in excitement for that phone to go off. Then once it did talking on the phone for hours just truly being who you are. Now a days you hardly hear a couple talk on the phone and when they do it is usually a whole lot of awkward silence and running out of things to say. So, we just text. Texting takes away the anticipation and the missing of the other person. It is usually short texts and when you get a long one it’s a huge deal because they actually put effort into it. Why is it there is a difference in mood between ok…(Sad), Okay(so-so), k(mad), okay.(mad), Okay(:,We look so into detail. We text people sometimes because through text or on the computer we can be however we want to people we have just met, but is that a good thing. We should want people to love us for who we are not who we pretend to be

You may not think there is much of a difference but, write someone a letter and you watch it will make them feel special. Seeing it in the other persons handwriting makes it more sentimental, more personal.(413)

-Ardeeemilla(:

Spring!(:

Look out the window of your house or car right now.  It’s UGLY out!  The time between winter and spring is probably the worst time of the year because everything looks so dead and dirty.  All the sand and salt that has been spread on the roads over the winter builds up everywhere.  The grass has now come out from under the snow and is brown and still crunchy from the cold.  The snow is melting and water is running, or in this year’s case, flooding everywhere. 

But never fear, spring is just around the corner.  Once those leaves start popping on the branches and it warms up enough for people to start cleaning up their yards, things will start looking a whole lot better.  I love spring.  It’s one of the best seasons of the year.  My mom and I get spring fever so bad sometimes, we can hardly stand it.  We both love to plant flowers and make the yard look nice. 

We moved two years ago into a new house.  The yard needed tons of landscaping done so my family spent the first summer (we moved in July) moving things around, digging up weeds and small bushes that had gotten out of control and then purchasing flowers that we could just stick in the ground to make things look nice.  None of them were flowers that would come back the next year.  The following spring, before the planting even started, we mapped out the yard.  We spend several days researching types of flowers that would grow best in each flower bed based on soil and sun.  Then we purchased everything and planted them.  It was my brother’s graduation year so we wanted to make sure that the following year everything would have had a good year to grow and look great.

The next spring, it was exciting to see all the new plants start coming out of the ground.  There were a few that didn’t make it over winter and we had to replace them but for the most part things were looking good.  First the tulips and daffodils came up and bloomed.  We have a nice bouquet of flowers for our Easter dinner table.  By June, everything else was up and starting to flower except for the flowers that we planted to come later in summer, the mums.  Mom and I had many compliments on how nice everything looked at my brother’s graduation party.

This year will be even more interesting because each year the flowers multiply and get bigger.  Before the snow fell last winter, mom and I put fertilizer on the flowers and covered them up with leaves so this year they should be bigger and more colorful than ever.  It’s March 15th, and the snow is slowly melting away.  That means very soon, we start to see life in the flower beds…that itch is coming on full force!!!(485)

Ardeeemilla(:

Law enforcement...

Does law enforcement do enough to catch people who commit crimes?

In 2007 in Marshall town, IA, a woman had just arrived home from work late at night.  When she got out of her car a man attacked her, he beat her, stabbed her and cut her face from ear to ear. He then let her to bleed, luckily she had enough strength to drag herself inside and call 911. This man who attacked her was her husband, Luis Luna-Alvarez.  They had decided to get a divorce and he had been drinking that night. My dad’s best friend Max, (I call him my uncle) his sister was this woman (so kind of my aunt) her name is Lupe.

She has two young children with this man, who were in the house when this whole incident happened. She had to spend a few weeks in the hospital and a while in intensive care. While she was there my mom and I had to take care of the kids because they obviously couldn’t stay in Marshall town and we live about an hour away from there. We had a lot of men at our house and the kids were kind of on lock down in my bedroom watching cartoons for the first couple of days just in case Luis decided to come back for them.  Today is March 15, 2013, and they still have not found him.

Now this story could go to ways for me, either that alcohol needs to be a bit more controlled or that our police department does not do enough to find or charge people with the crimes they have committed. I am going to go with the second one for today. After this whole situation happened the police acted like they would do something to find Luis but they didn’t. It took my dad and Max driving around asking people if they had seen him to find his abandoned SUV at a gas station just outside of Marshall town.

I’m sure this case is not a one of a kind, I’m sure there are people who had a worse situation. So what do we do about it? I think all of our police forces need to learn to work together. I bet that he probably left the country so why couldn’t they stop him? If they would have worked together I really feel that they could have caught him. My aunt now lives in Idaho were everyday she has to live in fear of him coming back. No one should have to live that way. (429)

Ardeeemilla(:

Cell Phones

When I was growing up, maybe around the age of 6, it dawned on me that my mother worked for the cell phone company but she and my dad were the only ones in the house that had cell phones.  I surely thought I needed one to be able to talk to all my friends…that I had at the ripe old age of 6.  As you can imagine, I didn’t get one.  Neither did my older brother and sister.   My parents thought we were too young to get one.  “How many 2nd graders do you see walking around with a cell phone?” my father would say.

Then as my oldest sibling entered middle school, she asked again for a cell phone.  ALL of her friends had cell phones.  She was the only one who didn’t.  My hopes of having a cell phone maybe were going to come true!  “Cell phones are expensive toys” my father would say and my mother would chime in with all the phone calls she would have to take at work from customers who were upset because their child used their cell phone too much and now had an outrageous phone bill.  So, it wasn’t to be.  My mom used to get the latest and greatest cell phones from her company for free.  She typically was one who would test the new phones coming in and so often would change cell phones every six months or so.  We were doomed to carry around one of her old cell phones that looked cool but weren’t hooked up to service.

One day, my mom came home and asked us all to come into the living room for a quick meeting.  There it was…a brand new cell phone with all the bells and whistles!  We screamed!   FINALLY…I got my phone.  Better late than never I guess.  It was the coolest phone.  In reality, knowing that I know now…it wasn’t that cool at all, but we had a phone.   Year later was when the really cool ones came!  Games and everything! 

“Can you please put down your cell phone for five minutes!” my dad would say.  “All I ever see is you with your phone in your hand or to your ear. Maybe we should just have it surgically placed there!”  We would just laugh.  That was because the cell phones we had were cool and the one that my dad had was an older phone that had nothing on it but a send and end button.  So for years we listened to what we now know as his ‘cell phone jealousy’.  How do we know this???

Two weeks ago, we all went to the cell phone store and got my dad a new phone.  It was time to bring him into the current century!  A new phone for dad…and guess what…every time I turn around, the phone is in his hand or stuck to his ear!  What the heck! (490)

Ardeeemilla(:

What are we eating?

Hey guys!

So in my AP Lang class we watched a video on where our food comes from and how it is produced. Have you ever wondered what the food companies do to feed the world, or where your food comes from? In this movie it showed the filthy conditions that the cows, chickens and pigs are raised in and the horrible ways that they are treated before the are slaughtered. Many of the animals are injected with hormones that cause them to grow at such fast rates there bodies cant even keep up, and many of them die from this. There legs cannot keep up with their weight so many of the animals can't even take a few steps before the fall. Are these hormones good for us?

I personally don’t understand why it is necessary to torture the animals before we kill them. So what if they are going to die anyway no one and nothing deserves to be treated that way no matter how long their life will be. Here is a video showing the horrible conditions that the animals live in and ways the animals are treated. I warn you I find this video hard to watch, it is very sad. Just think, if the animals in the video were dogs or cats. Would you have a problem with it? What's the difference?

The only way that we can make a difference is if we find out were our food comes from. Eat Organic if you can. Don't buy from these companies because maybe if we stop buying from them they will have to change the way that they are making our food and improve America’s health every where.
-Ardeeemilla(:

Gardening is coming!!(:

Hello Fellow Bloggers! :)

So my mom has been driving me crazy about getting started with our flowers.  She starts ordering tons of seeds and plants and before you know it she has flower magazines all over our house. (Needless to say she is obsessed.) It happens every year. Spending tons of time shopping and money on some of the coolest flowers is a great way to spend your money and time and to also makes your yard look amazing!

 You probably have different flower beds in your yard, some in the front, some in the back and maybe on the sides. One of the things you need to remember or think about though is what colors you want where. Flowers come in many colors, but sometimes not in the colors you want for the areas you want to plant them. You also need to know what kinds of soil you have as well as how much sunlight you are going to get in that area. When finding plants usually on the back on the tags there is information on what helps the flowers to grow to its full potential and you always want to pick the flowers that’s needs best match the kind of area you are putting the flowers in. Yards that have flower beds with all different kinds of flowers and colors all mixed together are not very attractive. It's a good idea to plant the taller flowers toward the back of the bed and the shorter flowers in the front. Making one bed full of pinks and reds and maybe another full of yellows and oranges is a great idea.

After they are planted, all that's left is the water! They need to be watered every day. If you don’t like just soil around the flowers you can also add rocks to your flower bed or even wood chips. Wood chips come in a lot of different colors and you just have to choose by what looks better with your house. And voila! You have a beautiful garden for everyone to see, and your neighbors will defiantly be super jealous. (357)

-Ardeeemilla :)